The King of the Netherlands was secretly flying passengers for 21 years and no one knew who was piloting their plane
Published on Mar 23, 2026 at 6:39 AM (UTC+4)
by Alessandro Renesis
Last updated on Mar 19, 2026 at 9:00 PM (UTC+4)
Edited by
Emma Matthews
The King of the Netherlands has been hiding a fascinating secret for years.
When he’s not busy representing his country, King Willem-Alexander spends some of his time working as a commercial co-pilot.
Actually, we’re not sure ‘working’ is the correct term because it’s unclear whether he got paid or not.
But that doesn’t matter, because there’s something else about this story that’ll blow you away.
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The King of the Netherlands ‘moonlighted’ as a pilot
The King of the Netherlands apparently spent some of his time in the past secretly flying commercial planes.
We say ‘secretly’ in the sense that his presence in the cockpit was never advertised.
We’re not sure what he may have said when the ‘Good Morning, this is your captain speaking’ message was broadcast in the cabin, but both Willem and Alexander are relatively common names, so people probably had no idea.
And presumably he only said ‘this is your captain speaking,’ and not ‘this is your King speaking.’
Still, it’s quite fascinating to think: if you’ve flown KLM, you may technically have flown with him.
Not every head of state could do this
We should probably point out that we can think of a very long list of country leaders who couldn’t do this.
Interestingly, the King of the Netherlands isn’t the only head of state/royal who’s also a pilot, though.
But that’s not the main reason why that’s the case.
For starters, some presidents, prime ministers, and royals are very recognizable.
So they couldn’t get away with this, not with all the extra attention and scrutiny.
Which brings us to the key reason why they couldn’t do this: they wouldn’t be allowed.
Some heads of state can’t even drive their own cars, let alone pilot an airplane.
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After beginning his automotive writing career at DriveTribe, Alessandro has been with Supercar Blondie since the launch of the website in 2022. In fact, he penned the very first article published on supercarblondie.com. He’s covered subjects from cars to aircraft, watches, and luxury yachts - and even crypto. He can largely be found heading up the site’s new-supercar and SBX coverage and being the first to bring our readers the news that they’re hungry for.
