Disaster Week

Disaster Week

As the founders of Dutch aviation, idealist Albert Plesman and opportunist Anthony Fokker, are inextricably bound together. They cannot live with each other or without. Nevertheless, during the Interwar Period when the world is heading towards a new war, they join forces to set up civil aviation in the Netherlands.

July 1935 – August 1935

Fokker is in huge demand for fighter planes due to the rearmament of European countries and is earning a lot of money from sales of the American DCs. But then a plane crashes near Amsterdam Schiphol with several deaths. Photos of the blackened Fokker logo appear in the newspapers. Bad publicity, but for Fokker just another reason to immediately start building a new plane. This new model is instantly rejected by Plesman. 

When another KLM plane crashes that same week in Iran, a DC-2, Fokker puts all the blame on Plesman in a newspaper interview. He claims that Plesman’s obsession with tight schedules is causing the pilots to fly while they’re exhausted. But Fokker has gone too far this time, even in the eyes of the KLM Board of Directors. From now on, every form of communication with the Fokker factory, will be done through his subordinates, Fokker is persona non-grata at the KLM.

The accidents cast a heavy burden on Plesman, even though no one was killed in the second crash. He gives orders to pick up the stranded travellers in Iran. When the passengers are back safe and sound, Plesman is relieved that the KLM isn’t losing even more face this week. But then news comes in of a third crash arrive. A DC-2 has crashed in the Alps. There are no survivors and one of the dead is Plesman’s own son, Jan, who had become a pilot in his father’s footsteps.

Plesman quickly returns to work and wants to prevent such an accident from ever happening again. Suze bottles up her grief inside. She can’t forgive Plesman for Jan’s death, even though she knows he’s not to blame. Plesman flees and takes a business trip to America with his assistant Neeltje.

On the boat to America, Plesman meets Fokker by pure coincidence. Fokker has accepted that his career as an aircraft manufacturer is over and he is leaving for America to focus on the construction of boats. The men avoid each other for the first few days. Until Plesman ends up in bed with Neeltje one night. He immediately regrets it, flees from the cabin and encounters Fokker standing by the railing. The two men have an honest conversation for the first time since they’ve known each other. They have now both lost loved ones to their passion for flying and they wonder aloud whether it was worth all this pain.