7 October was the birth date of KLM and Air France, the first in 1919, bearing the name Koninklijke Luchtvaartmaatschappij for The Netherlands and Colonies, and the second in 1933, resulting from the combination of five French airlines, Air Union, Air Orient, Société Générale de Transport Aérien (SGTA), CIDNA and Aéropostale.
Both count among the few existing airlines to have been founded before World War II. Both were pioneering players in civil aviation.
In 1920, KLM operated its first flight between London and Amsterdam with an Airco DH 16 piloted by Jerry Shaw, KLM’s first official pilot. As from 1921, the airline introduced regular routes that progressively served Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Brussels, Paris, London, then Bremen, Copenhagen and Malmö, with Fokker aircraft.
Starting in 1929, KLM created a regular long-distance route between the Netherlands and Indonesia, a Dutch colony at the time. Next, the Dutch carrier looked West and in 1934, created a trans-Atlantic service between Amsterdam and Curaçao, in the Dutch Indies, operated by a Fokker F-XVIII.
Meanwhile, in France, several private airlines embarked on their adventure in commercial aviation with a particular focus on transport of mail. Among them, the Lignes Latécoère, created in 1919, became Aéropostale in 1927.
In 1924, Jean Mermoz flew the Toulouse-Barcelona route, over the Pyrenees. Next came Casablanca-Dakar and the regular crossing of the desert in 1926, the first non-stop flight between Toulouse and Saint-Louis of Senegal in 1927, the launch of a service over the Andes Cordillera in 1929, and finally the first Atlantic crossings starting in 1930, firstly under the banner of Aéropostale and subsequently Air France.