English readers

The title of this blog Living on air is taken from a famous statement by the founder and first President (CEO) of KLM, Albert Plesman: "It's hard work to make a living on air". I would add: "It's hard work indeed, but also extremely challenging and fascinating".

Albert Plesman, 'founding father' of KLM (Foto: KLM)

Main starting points for this blog are my personal memories of KLM. In addition, I will regularly write about the history of civil aviation in general and of KLM in particular.
I will also include many of the stories and anecdotes I have heard from fellow KLM staff over the years . Some of those stories go back to the early years of KLM, long before I was born.

English version

I have noticed through Google statistics that there are quite a number of foreign readers trying to read my blog. You can use Google Translate but, as anyone knows, it produces very poor and inadequate translations. Nevertheless it may give you some notion of the contents.
Do you see an interesting post but Google Translate does'nt help a bit? Feel free to ask me for more details and I will try my best to provide an English synopsis for you. 

Let me introduce myself

My name is Peter Offerman. Between april 1970 and August 2003 I "lived on air" through my work for KLM Royal Dutch Airlines.
The first 7 years I was employed at the passenger handling department at Schiphol Amsterdam Airport, interupted by some "short assignements" to the Lebanese capital Beirut and to Twente airport near the city of Enschede in the eastern part of the Netherlands.

KLM head office in Amstelveen

From september 1977 until my early retirement (for health reasons) in 2003 I was empoyed by the Corporate Staff Bureau Public Relations, which later changed its name to Corporate Communications. It was located in the KLM head office in Amstelveen, a city between Amsterdam and Schiphol Airport.
My official function was spokesperson within the external communications department. Moreover I wrote press releases, back ground stories and speeches for the Executive Board.
My main areas of focus were the Technical Maintenance Division, Flight Operations and the environmental and sustainability aspects. Sustainability was a crucial element for the realization of optimum development of the KLM activities at Schiphol. I was, however, not only occupied with the present and the future, because I was at that time also the "company historian".
Between 1982 and 2003, amongst other things I was also in charge of the proposals to the KLM Executive Board for the names of new aircraft in the KLM fleet.

Previous blog

This blog is a sequel to my earlier blog "Memories of Harderwijk", which I have published between March and December 2013 and which covers the period between my birth til the moment I left the parental nest, at the age of 23, to start my KLM creer. To me obtaining a position within the airline industry was a long kept dream come true.

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