A European Monarch Is A Secret Airline Pilot

2024 Author: Steven Freeman | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 08:15

The King of the Netherlands, Willem-Alexander, joins celebrities like John Travolta, and even Prince Charles of England and his sons Harry and William, who are both qualified pilots. But apparently he would have taken that hobby so seriously that for more than two decades he has been a secret co-pilot for a commercial airline in his country.

It was the same monarch who revealed this part of his life to the Dutch newspaper De Telegraph: for twenty-one years he had that job for the KLM Cityhopper airline, a subsidiary of KLM that performs short-haul flights. Before that, he had piloted for another Dutch line, Martinair.

Willem-Alexander, who turned 50 in April, assumed the monarchy four years ago, when his mother Beatriz abdicated the Crown. With her ascension to the throne, the Argentine Máxima Zorreguieta became queen consort and after the birth of her three daughters, this royal family has managed to win the hearts of her subjects.

Becoming king, however, did not make Willlem-Alexander turn away from his passion for heights. Rather, he arranged his schedule so he could pilot twice a month.

According to him, this is even a kind of therapy, which has allowed him to develop a greater capacity for concentration even for his duties in the monarchy: “For me, the most important thing is that I have a hobby for which I need to concentrate completely.

"(When) you have an aircraft, passengers and a crew, you are responsible for them, you cannot take your problems from the ground to the skies, you can completely detach yourself and concentrate on something else, that is for me the part of flying that relaxes the most"

The first experience after command control of a King's plane was thirty years ago when he was still a student. In the late 1980s he worked as a volunteer pilot for a medical aid organization in Kenya and for the Wildlife Service in that same nation.