at Amsterdam's
Schiphol Airport in June 1972 in 1976 in 2001
Early years The first brainstorming sessions about starting a second
charter company in the Netherlands, after
Martinair, started in spring 1966, when the American
Chalmers Goodlin met with captain Pete Holmes. "Slick" Goodlin had recently bought the dormant small company
Transavia Limburg, based in
Maastricht, which had three 83-seat
DC-6 (plus 3 pilots and 3 cabin crew). The Dutch government needed to be approached in order to obtain an operating license for the airline, both in order to be allowed to operate out of Amsterdam Airport, and for these DC-6s. At that stage
John Block, a former member of the
Martinair Holland management, was willing to take that on. He succeeded, the license was issued on 14 November 1966, and two days later, on 16 November 1966, the airline's first commercial flight – Amsterdam/Naples/Amsterdam – was completed; During 1991, the airline's major shareholder,
Nedlloyd, sold its 80% holding to KLM. In 1998, Transavia was the first foreign airline to operate domestic services in
Greece following a change in Greek aviation law. In June 2003, KLM acquired the remaining 20% of Transavia, making it 100% KLM owned. The subsequent merger of
Air France and KLM made Transavia a wholly owned subsidiary of Air France-KLM. In the early 2000s, Transavia was primarily a charter airline with a
low-cost airline subsidiary called Basiq Air. To strengthen its brand image, the two were combined under the transavia.com domain name on 1 January 2005. Transavia had a French unit,
Transavia France, based at
Paris-Orly, but it is now fully owned by
Air France–KLM too. A Danish unit,
Transavia Denmark, based at
Copenhagen, operated from 2008 until April 2011 when it was shut down after failing to meet expectations. A
strike was organised by Air France pilots in September 2014, in protest against the Air France-KLM group's increased focus on the development of Transavia, whose pilots were being paid less than those of Air France. By early 2015, Transavia received a new
corporate design dropping the ".com" from its public appearance and changed its primary colors from white/green/blue to white/green. The airline is now to be positioned as Air France-KLM's low-cost brand for the Netherlands and France. In February 2017, Transavia announced that it would shut down its base at
Munich Airport by late October 2017 after only a year of service due to a change in their business strategy and negative economic outlook. In December 2019, Transavia announced the launch of its base at
Brussels Airport, initially operating nine routes from the airport. In December 2021, after a delay due to the coronavirus, the base at Brussels Airport was opened. Transavia will station one aircraft at the Belgian airport.
Post-COVID developments and fleet renewal Like other leisure airlines, Transavia was greatly impacted by the outbreak of the COVID-19 epidemic, and the worldwide travel disruptions that followed. Transavia noted a loss of 299 million euros in 2020. From 2021 onwards, the airline gradually started to recover from the crisis, as international air travel started to recover again. In December 2021, Transavia announced that the fleet is to be renewed with Airbus A320neo family aircraft. Together with its parent company Air France-KLM, an order was placed for 100 aircraft with 60 additional options. On 19 December 2023, the first Airbus A321neo aircraft was delivered which entered service with the airline some days later. ==Corporate affairs==