The Electra's career has been a bit snowed under under the thrill of the first generation of jetliners in civil aviation, there is little literature on them and because they only stayed in service for about 10 years or so, they were never much in the spotlight. Wrongly, by the way, they were fine aircraft and KLM enjoyed them a lot.

The 1950s had been a difficult time for KLM, profit figures fell short of expectations, a number of Constellations crashed, putting the airline in a bad light, and management changed a number of times. Thanks in part to the performance of the Lockheed Electra, operating results steadily improved in the 1960s.

From 1959, KLM had a total of 14 Electras in service, mostly deployed on medium-haul European routes (including Madrid, Rome, Athens, Lisbon and Stockholm) and far-east routes (including Saigon and Kuala Lumpur). KLM was the only European airline to employ the Electras. The Electras performed well and remained in service until 1969. After this, all 11 remaining Electras were sold to US carrier Universal Airlines. They were replaced by the Douglas DC-9. This was before the 1973 energy crisis and fuel was still relatively cheap at the time, otherwise KLM might have kept them in service for several more years.