You are currently in the Archives section. Please be aware that some information and links in the archived page may be outdated.

Click here to return to the Archives' main page to see the list of archived articles.

A R C H I V E S

MAKING A DIFFERENCE

I MISS JACQUES ANCHER

Jacques Ancher

     We have met some special people that have made a lasting impression and not just a little bit of fun out of 28 years of publishing Air Cargo News.
     Bill Spohrer, Bill Boesch and Tim Peirce are individuals that we admire, and in some way over the years may have even tried to emulate in one way or another.
     Tim, who served as manager of LaGuardia Airport for 23 years left us three years ago.
     Thinking about where you been and people that you’ve known is nothing very original.
     But today, with little more to report than an air cargo business and the airline industry rocked by a triple combination right cross of terrorism, recession and war, with what could be a nasty uppercut to follow called SARS, it might not be a bad idea to dream a little bit right now of other days.
     Who the hell wants to sit around worrying about what’s wrong anyway?
     All the people mentioned earlier have something in common.
     No matter what the situation, they always seem to not be overwhelmed by events, and usually able to figure things out.
     All of us could use a little more of that.
     I’ve decided to expand that list of people I admire.
     I hope my description here leaves no doubt.
     I miss Jacques Ancher.
     Jacques served a lifetime in transportation and at the point he retired in 1999, was executive vice-president cargo, at KLM Royal Dutch Airlines.
     Jacques Ancher had a lot going for him.
     He was a visionary of the air cargo business.
     In fact, Jacques saw way beyond the horizon when it came to about almost anything connected to transportation.
     He viewed air cargo and the entire logistics exercise in clear and precise terms, while others noticed little more than a blur in the rear view mirror.
     KLM operated a fleet of cargo friendly combi-aircraft across its vast international route system offering main-deck capabilities almost everywhere the airline flew.
     The airline also formed a holding company and acquired the most advanced air cargo facilities, while it moved to secure European road feeder companies.
     KLM brought on ACMI lift, as an originator of that form of transportation, as it positioned itself as the undisputed leader in several segments of air cargo, including live animal and perishables transport.
     The driving influence for much of this was Jacques Ancher.
     To be sure, KLM has always been a cargo savvy airline.
     In fact the current and immediate past chief executives of the carrier were both top cargo men at the airline before landing behind the CEO’s desk.
     Jacques Ancher brought focus, vision and excitement to his airline and air cargo as well.
     We remember Jacques as an amazingly well-rounded individual.
     He enjoyed air cargo, thought of this business as an art that it is, and he celebrated KLM Cargo with a passion that eludes most executives.
     He also gave the reporter the best of all possible worlds.
     Jacques was an engaged and engaging personality, who was always good copy.
     He could sit for hours with a room full of reporters in sessions of the world air cargo media at KLM Cargo headquarters.
     In an era of quickie statements and sound bites, when was the last time that happened anywhere?
     It really didn’t matter if the gatherings were about a product launch or facility dedication, issues came out on the table and were confronted.
     More often than not, what began as a media event turned into roundtable work session, “a kind of fetch up some deep thoughts and let’s talk about them,” encounter with the press.
     Finally Jacques began placing his wristwatch alongside his note pad at these gatherings because when the talk got going great, time to Jacques became a non-issue.
     But today any trade show forum session would do well to get a discussion going that even approximately matches the dynamics of reality and substance that those KLM media sessions were during the early 1990s.
     Jacques also seemingly enjoyed life and friends and good food and wine.
     Often when it came to entertaining, Jacques Ancher would pull out all the stops.
     Once after an all-day press session at cargo headquarters in Amsterdam, Jacques hosted a dinner for about 100 members of the media and others at Huis Von Loon, a classic Dutch double-sized canal house located in the old part of Amsterdam at 672 on a narrow street and waterway called the Keizersgracht, that once belonged to one of Rembrandt’s pupils and today is restored to its former elegance.
     Dinner at small candle-lit tables was intimate, excellently prepared and served with gaiety, élan, much laughter and good conversation, followed by a scripted light-hearted presentation that included Jacques and members of the KLM Cargo team.

Jan Meurer

     They just don’t do those kinds of things around air cargo very much anymore.
     Speaking of team, Jacques Ancher built a first class organization of the best and the brightest at KLM Cargo.
     Bram Graber, fresh-faced and smart as a whip when I met him in the mid-1990s, comes to mind.
     He’s still at AMS having moved up the air cargo management ladder.
     Jan Meurer was another Ancher masterpiece.
     “Wild Thing,” we used to call Jan for the way he blew into town, got things done, had a couple of pops, and was off on to an airplane, and another adventure.
     “Wild Thing” moved from Cargo Headquarters, to head of KLM Cargo USA to Head of all the USA for KLM where he managed to integrate the airline’s Americas operation into its alliance with Northwest and wind down its overhead without ending up wearing cement shoes in the waters off JFK Airport after having served up one too many pink slips.
     But we loved Jan because he is a real human being who would wait on a queue to get somebody a beer.
     Jan, by the way, today is boss of bosses for the KLM Flight Attendants.
     He must think he died and went to heaven.
     My favorite Jacques Ancher encounter occurred in 1995 while visiting KLM Cargo headquarters at Schiphol Airport.
     I was in the VIP lav washing my hands and noticed Jacques standing next to be doing the same thing.
     For no particular reason, I began talking about my desire to create an air cargo book series and how I had imagined that KLM with such a rich culture for cargo would be an ideal start.
     You know we talked in that small lavatory for 45 minutes without interruption and only exited after we had both shook hands, having decided to do the book.
     Outside a half dozen KLM’ers at HQ were wondering whether they should break the door down.
     Still today I remember the look on those faces as the top boss at KLM Cargo and the writer emerged from the executive toilet after 45 minutes.
     But that was Jacques.
     No matter what else was going on, his thought process was completely focused on what was at hand. Like a great athlete who hits or kicks a ball, his concentration was total.
     Working for him was a real treat.
      I researched the pictures, designed the book and wrote the copy from a base inside the legendary granite art nouveau 1902 American Hotel located near Leidse Square in Amsterdam.
     The place was a constant charge to the creative juices.
     I would work all day in my room overlooking the canal and drink all night in the hotel pub called The Nightwatch Bar, talking to the locals while imagining Hemingway barreling through a side door, slugging down a frosty tall Heineken, and disappearing into the night.
     At one point, awaiting a plane back to New York City, I was sitting in what I thought was an empty office up at KLM Cargo HQ late one Friday afternoon looking over some design sheets for the book (True Blue-The History of KLM Cargo 1996) when a soft familiar voice outside called out a name.
     It was Jacques looking for somebody.
     I bid him inside the room and entreated his patience to show him some of the stuff in the book, looking and hoping for approval.
     I read him the last page of the book, which was a picture of a small statue Jacques had commissioned for the reception room downstairs by the elevator.

     I described the page and read the caption, but he said nothing.
     Finally after a few moments I asked him what he thought of the work and the last photo and caption, saying something like:
     “You can suggest something else.”
     He looked at me and said:
     “I wouldn’t change anything.
     “Your work is unique.
     “You are an artist.”
     I cannot describe the feeling at that moment except to say that my desire to do books about the business I love was touched four square and has been fueled ever since.
     People that understand the human condition and attempt to balance the big time business thing are rare and few in our air cargo industry right now.
     Imagine an air cargo facility that is among the most advanced in the world which also contains art, commissioned by the airline affording artists at local destinations worldwide a palette to create original works that are presented in places of pride inside the working areas and waiting rooms of the cargo facility?
     Here’s something else that Jacques Ancher left to air cargo.
     The air cargo facility located in the City of Amsterdam, home of Rembrandt and Van Gogh, supports and displays original works created by aspiring artists from around the world.
     Jacques also saw to it that KLM created the first leading edge, avant-garde publication for air cargo when KLM Cargovision a magazine house organ was completely reformed during the mid-1990s into a monthly work of art itself, with incredible graphics and sizzle that today remains undated in its look and feel.
     I thought when he retired, he was too young to have left, and that he would probably pop up somewhere later.
     But apparently Jacques Ancher really wanted to study grandchildren and savor the wine of a life well-lived.
     He has repeatedly turned down interviews and “where is he now?” type stories preferring to stay at home or out on the beach enjoying his family and life.
     There is tremendous hope in the proposition that among us are well-ordered lives that continue after air cargo.
     Still I miss Jacques Ancher.
     He was not just another suit in the executive tier, but rather a great leader, thinker and patron of life to the air cargo business. To air cargo, Jacques Ancher was and is the Dutch Master. He also makes me feel glad that I lived long enough to tell you this story.
     Postscript: After completion of “True Blue” in late 1995 (first copies were published in 1996) I mostly forgot all about it except to wonder if Jacques liked the work at completion, as much as he indicated he had, while the work was in progress.
     After Jacques retired, somebody in mid-year 2000 from Delta Shuttle (which operates downstairs from our offices here at Marine Air Terminal-LaGuardia) knocked on the door of our office with a four year-old DHL package from Netherlands with apologies that the parcel had been put next to, and apparently fell behind a filing cabinet and wasn’t discovered until some renovations on the office took place.
     Inside the package was the best response possible to our KLM Cargo book, a framed special recognition from the great airline itself signed by Jacques Ancher and reproduced here for the first time anywhere.
     Later I asked somebody at KLM Cargo about True Blue and the reply was:
     “Oh, you mean the booklet?”
     I thought 108 pages and three hundred pictures is hardly a booklet.
     But then I remembered what Jacques had said, “You are an artist.”
     Since that moment I stay close and true to my creations, understanding that it is only the work that is important.

KLM's Bold New Freighter

     KLM Cargo lit up the excitement meter as it took delivery of the first of three brand new B747-400ER (Extended Range) cargo aircraft March 31st.
     Alan Mulally, President of Boeing Commercial Airplanes presented the aircraft named “Eendracht” (Unity) to KLM Cargo EVP Michael Wisbrun at Boeing Field in Seattle.
     The name “Eendracht” recalls a heroic VOC ship (a historic Dutch cargo carrier). KLM Cargo replaces its Boeing 747-300 freighters for Boeing 747-400 Extended Range Freighters.
     Seen here rotating from Boeing Field, the new freighter with the big distinctive word “Cargo” emblazoned on its fuselage took off for the Netherlands, where it landed at its home base Schiphol, on Tuesday morning, April 1, 2003.
     The aircraft will be deployed mostly on routes to the Far East, including Hong Kong, and Osaka.
     The arrival of the new freighter signals the start of KLM’s fleet renewal program.
     “Our aim,” said Mr. Wisbrun, “is to improve the airline’s operational efficiency and flexibility, as well as reduce unit costs and extend the operational scope of the KLM fleet within the airline’s global network.”
     “The Boeing 747-400 Freighter ER should do just that.
     “Adding one of the biggest best aircraft on the planet to KLM Cargo’s worldwide network will serve to improve service to its customers considerably, adding the ability to transport 112 tons of cargo.”
     The new aircraft and two that follow (the second this month) are all equipped with an advanced loading system designed especially for KLM Cargo.
     “Even in these trying times, with so many fluctuations in demand and capacity, this freighter will allow us to operate more efficiently, because it ensures lower unit costs and a higher hourly yield,” Michael Wisbrun said.
     “The new Boeings will improve our ability to further implement our long term cargo plan, as we are better able to serve the market as business returns.”