S
ay the name Martinair to
any aviation enthusiast
and many will immediate-
ly think of the carrier’s dis-
tinctive white and red liv-
eried McDonnell Douglas tri-jets, full of
happy holidaymakers or freight. That’s
sadly all in the past now: the airline’s
last passenger flight departed in 2011,
its final MD-11 retired in July 2016 and,
today, it’s a shadow of its former self,
owning just a single Boeing 747-400
Freighter.Where it all began
In 1958 military pilot Johan Martin
Schröder – then aged 27 – decided toset up his own airline operating tours
and charter services, exploiting market
niches that KLM Royal Dutch Airlines
wasn’t interested in.
He acquired a de Havilland DH
104 Dove, PH-MAC (c/n 04020), and
launched sight-seeing tours over
Amsterdam on May 15, nine days
before forming Martin’s Air Charter
(MAC). By the end of the year, the
Dove had flown 9,000 passengers,
while during the night it undertook
cargo flights flying tulips and roses to
Gothenburg, Sweden.
The fleet expanded in February 1960
with the arrival of DC-3 PH-MAB (c/n
4500), which flew the company’s firstcharters to Palma de Mallorca and
Jersey. More DC-3s followed while
a C-54 Skymaster joined the fleet
to launch transcontinental links to
Buenos Aires in 1963. The following
year Schröder bought five former KLM
DC-7s, and suddenly charter and cargo
flights were being flown to destina-
tions such as Moscow, Tokyo, the US
and Canada, Netherlands Antilles,
Suriname and even Australia.
Ten years after the arrival of the
Dove, Martinair entered the ‘Jet Age’,
DC-9s replacing many of its piston and
turboprop aircraft on its European net-
work – although a couple of the ‘props’
remained in the fleet until 1971.Faded
Glor
charters to Palma de Mallorca and
Jersey. More DC-3s followed whileFor almost five decades Martinair had
been the second force in Dutch commercial
aviation after KLM but it has experienced a change
in fortune over the last ten years, as Richard
Schuurman explains.
The McDonnell Douglas
MD-11 freighter became
the backbone of
Martinair Cargo’s fleet
after the carrier stopped
flying passenger
services in October- AIRTEAMIMAGES.
COM/MATT7X
http://www.airlinerworld.com 53