"Slick" Goodlin had recently bought the dormant small company Transavia Limburg, based in Maastricht, which had three DC-6's available.

The company found offices at the old Schiphol Airport, Hangar 7 and the fledgling's financier Slick Goodlin appointed the three-pronged management: Commercial Director J.N.

Building up the airline from scratch, ten years later Transavia had a marketshare of 45% of the Dutch holiday market and became the main competitor of Martinair.

It was the first airline to take advantage of the first open skies agreement signed between the UK and Dutch governments.

Transavia started operating its first scheduled service on the Amsterdam to London Gatwick route on 26 October 1986.

In 1992, Transavia was operating code sharing flights between Amsterdam and London Gatwick on behalf of Continental Airlines with these services providing passenger feed for Continental nonstop flights between London and New York City (via Newark Airport), Houston and Denver.

In 1998, Transavia was the first foreign airline to operate domestic services in Greece following a change in Greek aviation law.

A Danish unit, Transavia Denmark, based at Copenhagen, operated from 2008 until April 2011 when it was shut down after failing to meet expectations.

[5] By early 2015, Transavia received a new corporate design dropping the ".com" from its public appearance and changed its primary colors from white/green/blue to white/green.

[7] In February 2017, Transavia announced that it would shut down its base at Munich Airport by late October 2017 after only a year of service due to a change in their business strategy and negative economic outlook.

[10] Like other leisure airlines, Transavia was greatly impacted by the outbreak of the COVID-19 epidemic, and the worldwide travel disruptions that followed.

In 1997 two incidents occurred with substantial damage to the aircraft: Media related to Transavia at Wikimedia Commons