KLM's losses have risen to record levels and Plesman is threatened with dismissal. Fokker is doing very well, he participates in the Ford Air Reliability Tour in America and also meets a new love. Then he discovers that Plesman is deviously trying to get rid of him in the Netherlands by going with a competitor.

The stock market crash forces Albert Plesman to work even harder to keep KLM afloat at the expense of his family life. His wife Suze Plesman misses her familiar role as a sounding board and she is reconsidering her position as 'wife of'. In America, Fokker has his own problems as a result of the crisis, which his wife Violet Austman also suffers greatly from.

After his failed American adventure, Fokker is back in the Netherlands and is working on a biography about himself. Meanwhile, Plesman threatens to lose the lucrative mail transport to a competitor, and is forced to use the outdated Fokker 'Pelikaan' for a dangerous flight to the Dutch East Indies.