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This is Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands.
He’s king of the 17.2 million bike-riding, windmill building, Stroopwaffle eating, clog
wearing people of the Netherlands, in addition to the 300,000 people of the Dutch Caribbean
islands of Bonaire, Sint Eustatius, Saba, Aruba, Curaçao, and Sint Martin.
Now, despite the fact that barely anyone outside of the country even knows the Netherlands
is a monarchy, the King is a pretty important job.
Willem-Alexander is the head of state and has far-reaching powers into different branches
of the Dutch government.
In practice, though, sort of like the Queen of the UK, he largely stays out of politics.
You see, the monarchy of the Netherlands is pretty low-key.
In his youth, Willem-Alexander was known in the media as, “Prince Pils.”
That’s pils with one “l,” in reference for his affinity for Pilsner beer, in addition
to other large quantities of alcohol consumed during his time at the University of Leiden.
Eventually, though, he graduated and got interested in the best beverage of all—water.
Seriously, everything you read on him mentions his keen interest in water management which
sounds like an innuendo for bladder control but it’s actually not.
Eventually, though, in 2013, his mom quit her job and thanks to nepotism, he, of course,
walked his way in to the exact same position.
They even threw this big party for him on his first day.
Now-King Willem-Alexander is known for his casual style of monarchy—he never wears
his crown; nobody calls him “his majesty”; his daughters, who are princesses, go to public
school; he has his own Instagram account; and he even turns his throne around and sits
in it backwards in order to seem cool and approachable to the kids.
Since long before his current job, though, Willem-Alexander has held another job—as
an airline pilot.
You see, back in 1985, slightly concerningly before being dubbed Prince Pils, he earned
his private pilots license, followed two years later by his commercial pilot’s license.
He first used this to work as a volunteer pilot for some organizations in Kenya in addition
to just recreational flying.
He got his license to fly multi-engine jet aircraft in 1989, his military pilot’s license
in 1994, then in 2001, he got the crown jewel of pilots licenses—the airline transport
pilot license.
That’s the license you need to fly big boy airplanes with passengers in the back, and
so, soon after, Willem-Alexander started doing just that.
Now, how or why exactly this arrangement started is a bit unclear, but sometime in the early
2000s, somehow, then-Prince Willem-Alexander strutted over to KLM and cashed in his, “I’m
a prince,” card to negotiate a deal to work for them as a part-time pilot.
This made sense for two reasons.
One was that KLM’s full name literally translates to Royal Aviation Company, Inc, so having
a little royal in the company, despite the fact it was then and is now a fully private
company, would keep it honest to its name.
That way they wouldn’t have to switch to being called Aviation Company, Inc.
Two was that KLM operated the Dutch government airplane.
At the time it was a Fokker 70 which would be used the royals or politicians to go where
they needed to go, and so, once certified, Willem-Alexander would regularly fly this
airplane, especially when it was the royals using it.
The hours of flying he got from the government airplane alone, though, weren’t enough to
maintain his pilot’s license so eventually he started flying regular passenger flights
too.
He worked for KLM Cityhopper, the airline’s subsidiary, flying the Fokker 70 to glamorous
places all around the wor… all around Euro… all around north-western Europe like Humberside,
Darlington, and Norwich.
Nobody really ever knew he was working as copilot for these flights, aside from the
rest of the crew, as he would never introduce himself by name when making announcements
and, even in the airport, he was rarely recognized in his KLM uniform.
He flew a few times a month all throughout the 2000’s, and continued to do so even
after he became King.
In 2017, though, he ran into a bit of a problem.
KLM was retiring all of their Fokker aircraft in favor of newer, more efficient Embraer
jets, and these Fokkers were the only aircraft that the king was certified to fly commercially.
This was an even bigger issue for the Dutch government whose plane, the Fokker 70, could
no longer be operated by KLM as they would no longer have pilots or mechanics for the
plane.
They therefore made the decision to buy a Boeing 737 Business Jet, which was better
equipped for longer trips, which it turns out the Dutch have to do a lot to catch up
with all the places they accidentally colonized back in the day.
So, Willem-Alexander made the decision to go through the long, expensive process of
getting type rated for the 737 and, once done, started flying 737’s for KLM.
This would take him to much further-flung destinations all around Europe and sometimes
further.
While it was always a sort of open secret, he revealed this side-gig of his to the press
in 2017, which resulted in quite a lot of attention.
While he apparently flies about twice-monthly, his last confirmed sighting was in late 2018
when he worked as co-pilot on a KLM flight to and from Istanbul, or, as the cool kids
call it, Constantinople.
Speaking of which, if you want to learn more cool kid words, it’s not called the Battle
of Normandy, it’s called Operation Overlord, at least in the allies’ codename system.
The logistics of landing a fighting force strong enough to take back Europe on a few
French beaches were immense, but that’s exactly what Brian from Real Engineering’s
new Nebula original is about—the logistics of D-Day.
This is just one of many original series’ available on Nebula, which is, of course,
the streaming site built by myself and plenty of other creators.
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