Air Holland

If you stood at the fence at Schiphol in the 1990s, you regularly saw a very different shade between the blue of KLM and the green and white of Transavia: the bold orange of Air Holland. The small charter airline from the Haarlemmermeer flew vacationers to the Mediterranean and beyond, leased aircraft to other companies and consistently relied on Boeing – above all the 757. Here you learn how Air Holland came about, why it stumbled several times, which aircraft defined it and how a line leads from it to today’s TUI fly Netherlands.

Air Holland at a glance

Air Holland was a Dutch charter airline headquartered in Oude Meer and based at Amsterdam Schiphol Airport. It was founded in 1984 by John Block, who had previously worked at the two established leisure airlines Martinair and Transavia. Some accounts date the company’s roots as far back as 1981; operations in any case began in 1985.

The business model was broad: Air Holland flew passenger and cargo charters to destinations in the Mediterranean, Africa and Asia. It also leased aircraft to other airlines – sometimes just the aircraft (dry lease), sometimes with crew, maintenance and insurance (wet lease). This very leasing business explains why Air Holland jets occasionally turn up in photos at places that do not look like leisure-airline territory at all.

The airline was never particularly large, but it was independent: it belonged neither to KLM nor to one of the big travel groups. That made it flexible but also vulnerable – a pattern that runs through its entire history.

Codes and callsign

• ICAO code HLN: the identifier toward air traffic control and in flight plans.
• Callsign ORANGE: how the crews identified themselves on the radio – a nod to the Dutch national color and its own livery.
• IATA code: Here the reference works contradict each other. Both GG and HD are given. Because neither can be clearly documented, we do not list the IATA code as established.

If you are working through old schedules or tickets, the ICAO code HLN is therefore the more reliable anchor. How the two code systems relate and why IATA codes can be reassigned after an airline ends is explained in the article on IATA and ICAO codes. You can read more stories behind radio callsigns under airline callsigns and their history.

A small punchline for radio listeners: TUI fly Netherlands, in whose lineage Air Holland stands, also identifies itself as “ORANGE” today. Whether that is a deliberately adopted legacy, the sources do not say – the parallel is worth hearing all the same.

The history in stages

A start against resistance

In the mid-1980s the Netherlands already had two established leisure airlines: Martinair, in which KLM held a stake, and Transavia. A third provider was not welcome everywhere. According to common accounts, both KLM and Transavia tried to block the operating license for Air Holland, which delayed the start of the new airline.

Transavia evidently did not want to let go later either: in the early 1990s there was an attempt to take over Air Holland, which however failed. For spotters at Schiphol, this competition had a pleasant side effect – three Dutch leisure airlines in three clearly distinguishable color schemes.

What role charter airlines played compared with traditional scheduled airlines and why tour operators in particular bought their seats from such companies is explained in the article charter flight vs. scheduled flight.

The fleet: Boeing only

Air Holland was one of the airlines that never operated an aircraft from another manufacturer. All types came from Boeing. The most important at a glance – the numbers show how many examples were in service in total over the years, not how many at the same time:

Type	Period at Air Holland	Total number	Spotter tip
Boeing 727-200	1985–1988	3	Trijet of the early years, registrations PH-AH…
Boeing 757-200	1988–2004	around 11–12	Backbone of the fleet, some leased with G- registrations
Boeing 767-200ER	1990–1991	1	Leased from Britannia Airways
Boeing 737-300	1997–2000	3	Registrations PH-OZA to PH-OZC
Boeing 767-300ER	2002–2004	3–4	Went to HollandExel and later Arkefly

The fleet figures in the reference works are not entirely consistent; individual sources arrive at somewhat different totals. The order of the types and the rough timeline, however, are documented consistently.

Boeing 727-200: the early years

At the start, Air Holland relied on the Boeing 727-200, a trijet widely used in the 1980s for short and medium routes. Three examples flew for the airline until 1988. Photos from this period are rare and therefore especially appealing for collectors of historic Schiphol shots.

Boeing 757-200: the workhorse

From 1988, the Boeing 757-200 became the defining type. The slim twinjet suited the charter business ideally: enough seats for full vacation flights, range even for destinations beyond the Mediterranean and good performance on shorter runways at vacation airports. Most of its own aircraft carried Dutch registrations from the PH-AH… series, joined by leased examples with British G- registrations, for instance from the fleet of the British Monarch Airlines.

The 757 stayed in service until the end. If you go through old Schiphol photos today, you will therefore almost always find Air Holland on a 757. How to reliably tell it from the larger 767 in photos is shown in the article telling the Boeing 757 and 767 apart.

Boeing 737-300: a short interlude

Between 1997 and 2000, three Boeing 737-300s supplemented the fleet. They carried the registrations PH-OZA, PH-OZB and PH-OZC. With them, Air Holland could also serve smaller charter jobs economically for which a 757 would have been too large.

Boeing 767: widebody for charter

The first encounter with the 767 was a lease: around 1990/91, a Boeing 767-200ER with a British registration flew at Air Holland, coming from Britannia Airways – the British charter airline that had been the first in Europe to operate the type.

From 2002, Air Holland then relied on the Boeing 767-300ER. The widebody jets opened up the long-haul charter field but arrived at a time when the airline was already under financial pressure. After the end in 2004, HollandExel took over the 767-300ERs. According to Dutch sources, two of them – PH-AHX and PH-AHQ – later flew at Arkefly and kept their old Air Holland registrations there until 2014 and 2015 respectively.

Crises, restarts and the end

For long stretches, Air Holland lived on thin financial ice. At the end of 1990, a loss of around 30 million guilders was on the books, and in 1991 flight operations had to be suspended. Founder John Block left the company, new management took over, and on December 20, 1991, Air Holland flew again. Dutch accounts say that over the course of its history the airline slid into insolvency several times and each time carried on with a restart.

In early 2004 that no longer worked. In February, Air Holland applied for a payment moratorium, and shortly afterward flight operations were suspended. Aircraft, staff, flights and obligations were taken over by HollandExel, a new charter airline of the Amsterdam-based Exel Aviation Group. On March 25, 2004, the court in Haarlem finally declared Air Holland bankrupt – there was no real restart under the old name this time.

Even after the end, Air Holland made headlines: in late 2004, Dutch media reported suspicions that money of dubious origin had flowed into the airline in its last years. Two former executives were convicted of money laundering at first instance but acquitted on appeal because a legal origin of the money could not be ruled out. For aviation history this remains a footnote – but it explains why the name in the Netherlands is still not associated only with vacation flights.

Air Holland thus stands in line with many European charter airlines that were ground down between price wars, seasonal business and thin capital. In the same year, for example, the Belgian Sobelair also disappeared. An overview of the major collapses is given in the article on airline failures in Europe.

From Air Holland to TUI fly Netherlands

The story did not quite end in 2004. HollandExel kept flying with Boeing 767-300ERs, mainly for tour operators to long-haul destinations such as Cuba, Mexico and the Dominican Republic. But the Exel group did not last long either: in February 2005, HollandExel applied for a payment moratorium, and bankruptcy followed in May 2005.

The travel group TUI took over flight operations. Under the name Arkefly, named after the Dutch tour operator Arke, it continued from April 2005. Since 2015 the airline has carried the TUI name and today flies as TUI fly Netherlands within the TUI airlines. The lineage is not entirely straightforward – Air Holland went bankrupt, and HollandExel was legally a new company. But a common thread runs through aircraft, staff and registrations from the orange charter airline to today’s leisure carrier.

How to recognize Air Holland

In photos from the 1980s to the early 2000s, Air Holland is easy to place. The livery relied on orange and blue; in the logo, the two “L”s of “Holland” stood on top of each other in exactly these colors. That set the airline clearly apart from the KLM blue and from the colors of Transavia and Martinair. Details of individual livery variants are best checked using dated photos, because the look changed over two decades.

Traces of Air Holland today

You can no longer spot Air Holland itself. Its descendant, however, you can – and the types that defined it have not quite disappeared either. The 757 mostly still flies as a freighter today, the 767-300ER with some charter and cargo operators.

If you are spotting at Amsterdam Schiphol Airport for the first time, the Panoramaterras is a comfortable introduction. Where the orange-and-blue Air Holland 757s used to roll off, you now see the fleets of KLM, Transavia and TUI fly Netherlands.

Common mix-ups

• Confusing Air Holland with KLM – Air Holland was an independent charter airline and never belonged to KLM.
• Thinking Air Holland was a predecessor of Martinair – Martinair is much older and was a competitor; Air Holland’s founder had merely worked there.
• Equating HollandExel with Air Holland – HollandExel took over operations and aircraft in 2004 but was a separate company.
• Adopting the IATA code unchecked – the sources give different codes; HLN as the ICAO code is the reliable figure.
• Always attributing the callsign ORANGE to Air Holland – today it is used by TUI fly Netherlands, so in current radio recordings the successor is meant.

Conclusion

Air Holland was the orange-and-blue outsider of Dutch leisure aviation. It had to fight for its place against KLM and Transavia, relied consistently on Boeing and made the 757 a familiar sight at Schiphol. Financially the airline never stood on firm ground, and the final end came in 2004. Still, a thread leads via HollandExel and Arkefly to TUI fly Netherlands. For spotters, Air Holland is thus a piece of Schiphol history that jumps out immediately in old photos.