He used to fly domestic routes for KLM as a co-pilot, neat! https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-39946532

There aren't any domestic KLM routes, the country is roughly the size of the New York area :-)

He used to fly KLM cityhopper which is KLM's "regional airline" in US terms, going across most of Europe. Then he transitioned to the 737 because the government bought a 737 BBJ as their new private jet. The government jet is operated by KLM, so the king can fly it as first officer together with a KLM captain.

Fun fact: There is an agreement with the pilots union that the first officer that got replaced by the king operating a flight gets paid as if they flew it.

> There aren't any domestic KLM routes, the country is roughly the size of the New York area

i don't know about now, but certainly in the 90s you could get a flight from Eindhoven to Schiphol.

i remember trying to get from Eindhoven to London on the phone and being told there were no seats - i'd have to fly to Schiphol (deep gloom on my part). Luckily, when i turned up at check-in, the lovely KLM girl on the desk said "No you don't need to do that - we'll fit you in on the Heathrow flight"

I must say that of all of the airlines i flew with, I probably liked KLM the best

That's a long time ago. Even longer ago you could have done Twente airport to Amsterdam. But none of those exist anymore.

Oops! It sounded entirely feasible, the "Cityhopper" designation and seeing the tiny jet threw me off.

I first read about this in an in-flight magazine; the other story was about the PM who arrived on bicycle and left it outside the palace while paying the King a visit after the election.

> The Dutch king earns a few million euro per year.

My god, I weep for him. A pathetic millionaire instead of glorious billionaire. How torturing.