WearyBizTrvlr
Apr 2, 05, 5:32 pm
Preliminaries
With the prospect of yet another rainy weekend in Holland over Easter, and the two days off we get (Friday and Monday), the urge to escape the dreary outlook started to become irresistible. So I decided to look for a long weekend trip to someplace warm and sunny, and to take Thursday off as well.
Really warm weather this time of year still requires substantial travel, as anything within Europe is not going to cut it. My usual haunt in Florida was not available, so I decided to look south first, to Cape Town. The weather forecast and climatology data seemed OK, but I could not find suitable award seats on KLM.
Why KLM you ask? The main reason is the huge pile of miles I had racked up in my Flying Dutchman account. With the prospect of the merger of AF’s Frequence Plus and FD coming ever closer, it seemed more than reasonable to assume that existing miles under the new scheme would end up being devalued. The great inflationary pressure of printing fiat miles would also prove to be a motive force in nudging AF to make the new scheme less attractive. So I decided to burn some of my miles.
Award availability for KLM falls in the D bucket so checking for awards was not too hard, as long as the data supplied online was indeed correct. With Cape Town out of the picture, it was time to look further east, and nearer the equator. I tried, BKK, KUL and SIN, and amazingly, the latter showed D9 on Wednesday 23rd and D5 on Monday 28th. Perfect – I could leave Wednesday night and be back on Tuesday morning. Rather gamble with the KLM web site, I decided to call the infamous Flying Dutchman Hinderdesk to book the ticket. All in all, it was an amazingly painless exercise, as they booked it quickly and without hassle, contradiction, confusion or condescension. They promised to email me a confirmation too. What was even better was that the random number generator that purports calculate taxes on award tickets came up with the princely sum of 33 euros. Given the perennial stream of complaints on the KL forum here, I was truly blessed. The only problem, as I saw it, was that it’d be a paper ticket, so I had to pick it up at Schiphol before the flight. I expressed my surprise that it wasn’t going to be an e-ticket, but nothing could be done about that.
One of KLM’s entries for the global “Shoot Yourself In The Foot” contest is the on-line check-in procedure, which requires the ticket number. Not the booking reference or PNR, but the actual ticket number. Not only is this an unwieldy long sequence of digits, but with some e-tickets it’s hard to find, and with my paper ticket waiting for me at Schiphol, there was no way I could check-in early online and snag a good seat. By the time evening rolled around, I still had not received the promised confirmation from KLM by email. Fearing the worst, I called again, but to my relief they managed to send me the confirmation quickly. What happened on the first attempt shall forever remain unknown.
One day before departure I hopped over to the airport to get my ticket. I got there around 7 pm, and the ticketing office was a huge scrum. In order to impose some form of order, there is a machine dispensing tickets with numbers on them. Match the number to the one that lights up on the displays, and you can proceed to be, well, helped, one should guess. The machine also contains a note that FD Platinum Elite members can go straight to the Platinum desk on the left, without the need to wait for your number to come up. This is great of course, except there’s only one Platinum counter and no place to form an orderly line. So it turns into a bit of a random shuffle. And since there’s only one desk, if the guy in front of you ends up with a complicated ticketing issue, you could be waiting for a long time. Morale: always get a number. In this instance it wasn’t so bad, especially considering there were so few people working the rest of the ticketing counters.
I handed over my credit card to pay the 33 euros, and was handed an itinerary in return, with a confirmation of my e-ticket. I blinked. If I’d known it’d be an e-ticket, I could have handled the tax payment on the phone too, without having to come out to the airport in the first place. On the other hand, it did slightly put the world back to rights again, as the KLM FD helpdesk had managed to screw things up after all, even if only slightly.
The availability for the outbound flight did not change at from all 9’s in business. Even D remained stuck at 9, but I find it hard to believe that there were actually 9 award seats plus mine (plus others?) available. In the inbound flight from SIN showed D5 before booking and went down to D0 thereafter. It’s hard to tell whether this is due to the innate vagaries of KLM’s erratic computer systems, or whether this is the carefully though-out result of an algorithm that was devised by a gaggle of operational research PhD’s that KLM keeps entombed in a vault deep inside Holland’s tallest mountain. Considering the latter is a speedbump of about 1,000ft in total height, it’s probably both.
Ticket number now known, I went home and checked right in. I’d often been on the upper deck on 747’s on various airlines, but I’ve never been up front on the lower deck. The seat guides on the web claim that the seats there afford a nice semi-forward view, so I decided to go for 1K, which I duly obtained.
Phew. Just one more day at work to survive.
AMS-SIN
Flight KL 837, 20:30 Wed 23 Mar 05, Seat 1K, World Business Class
Knowing that soon I would be on my way to Singapore, a serene calm was upon me during the day. I left the office early at 5:45pm, went home, took a quick shower and change of clothes, and was at the airport by 7pm or so. Rather than negotiate the madding crowds at the bag-drop off for the self-service check-in machines, I went to the long-haul business counters just opposite the ticket office. I dropped my bag off, and got my boarding card. Theoretically I could have printed a boarding card using online check-in, but the pdf files that the KLM website produces have been, right from the start, unprintable. And I’ve tried printing on 8 different printers, so I doubt it’s a printer issue. Perhaps an Acrobat issue. No luck thus far though.
The check-in process was entirely painless. No wait at all, just the bag being tagged with the usual barcode and a perfunctory priority label. Priority for elites or business class passengers on KLM is theoretically available, but seldom materializes in practice.
I whipped out my Privium pass to go through the iris-scan border check, and was through in no time at all. As usual, nobody asked me to see my boarding card. From here it was to the left and up to the Crown lounge to imbibe some alcohol and feast on the graciously provided cheese and crackers. There has recently been a change in the cracker provider, going from Wasa to a Dutch brand whose name I should know but always forget. No big deal though. The lounge was quite full, but not to the point that finding a spot to sit became a problem. In the mornings the KLM lounges can be utterly packed; only the LH lounges in Frankfurt seem to have a worse chronic overcrowding problem.
I got my 30 minutes of complimentary internet connection as Platinum FD member (renewable for free every half hour), and did some quick email checking and web browsing. It was around 40 minutes before the scheduled departure time that I headed to gate F3. The monitors were showing the flight was boarding, which in practice meant that it was pre-boarding. Since I was going to the gate somewhat late, the long lines had all but disappeared with people now waiting in the boarding area. I walked straight to the door leading to the jetway and waited there for a few minutes for the boarding to start. I was the first through, as most of the others had been sitting. In my usual absent-mindedness I almost missed the left turn to the front door, which in this case was 2L. This is the one near the stairs leading to the upper deck, so my seat was well forward. It also means going through the half-width economy section that sits between the stairs and the front business cabin. The plane, I should mention, was a 747 Combi, meaning that a good chunk of the aft compartment was used for cargo.
Onwards and forwards, I arrive in the World Business Class cabin of a KLM plane for the first time in years. My earlier experiences with WBC have led me to avoid KLM for long-haul, so it’ll be an interesting experience to see how KLM fares after having done many flights on BA, CO and SQ. It will be very hard to avoid comparing KL to SQ on this particular route, and on first impressions SQ of course wins hands down. No Singapore Girls to be seen on KL of course! ;) I thought back to my previous trip to Singapore, on SQ. I was still chatting on the phone before the doors had closed, and was gently told by a Singapore Girl, “Sorry sir, you must off the handphone.” I felt like I was in Singapore already without even leaving the ground in Amsterdam. Ah, bliss.
The amount of bliss on KL flights is rather more limited. First order of business was stowing my carry-on, and this, as they say, turned out to be a non-trivial undertaking. I will readily admit that my carry-on bag is slightly pushing the limits of what is allowable, but not by much. I also knew, based on my consultations with seatexpert.com and seatguru.com that the overhead bins for row 1 would be smaller. However, my carry-on would not fit into any of the overhead bins in the front cabin. This came as bit of a shock, because on long-haul I’ve never had a problem cramming it in. In fact, even on CO’s 737’s I can easily fit it in overhead. So I took the next best option, and put it in the closet in the front of the cabin.
The seats were the standard KLM WBC seats. A solid, modern, world-class offering about 15 years ago. Being in the first row, I had additional leg room, but on the other hand, there was no space to stow any items near or around the seat. This is incredibly annoying, of course. The purser came by to welcome me on board, and I was offered a choice of water, juice or champagne. I took the latter, and was not impressed with the quality. A bit later the flight attendant who’d be serving me came back with the amenity and shortly thereafter, the breakfast menu and dinner menu. Other passengers were slowing filling up the cabin, and unfortunately the seat next to me was taken too. However, as I put my shoes up in the overhead bin, I saw that row 2 was empty, so there was hope yet.
The last amenity kit I remember from KLM was a tin box, which was an interesting concept and worked reasonably well. Not content with having any part of the WBC experience being merely good when it could be silly, KLM must have decided to up the ante. The contents are still OK, although the ever-expensive shoe-horn has gone missing. The new kit is a rectangular bag of synthetic fiber with a carrying loop at one end, and a zipper running along the top. The design aesthetic is best described as appealing the demographic of 14-year old high school girls (prime customers in WBC, obviously). The fluorescent disco blue provides just that little pathetic twist to an otherwise already effeminate look. I should also mention the Glam Rock version of the eye mask, which was furnished in Glittering Silver. When the cabin lights are dimmed, and you have a laser pointer, you can sweep it over the cabin, and recreate a scene out of the Outer Limits – Invasion of the Silver Strip Eyed Monsters From Beta Eridani. I must say, this is the worst-looking amenity kit I have received in a long time.
While the purser had addressed me in Dutch, the flight attendant spoke English to me. I generally just answer back in whatever language I am spoken to (within reason), and as I had an inkling that her English might be lacking based on the first exchange, I decided to keep the rest of the communication Anglophone too. My suspicions, based on these first few words she spoke, soon turned out to be correct. Her English was passable, and enough to handle her duties, but it was insufficiently idiomatic to provide polite service. I noted at least three instances in which her English verged on the rude; not necessarily because she was rude (well, she was Dutch, so the baseline is different to begin with), but simply because she was unable to express herself properly and therefore ended up being curt, vague and possibly rude. As a slight tangent, after a European KLM flight, I said goodbye to a flight attendant in Dutch, having spoken to her in English the entire flight. She was actually offended that I had made her speak English the whole time! Astounding.
My next interaction with the flight attendant was when she came to exhort us to fill out the breakfast menu. You can choose whether you want plain or fruit yoghurt, muesli or corn flakes, cheese platter yes or no, strawberry or apricot jam, and the sweet or savory hot item. A final box allows you to tell them whether they should wake you for breakfast. A slightly unorthodox system, but it does allow for faster breakfast service, and hence longer sleep. So even before ordering dinner, I had ordered breakfast.
The dinner menu was as follows:
Appetiser
Smoked duck breast served with a date and fig compote
Main Courses
Chicken breast with morel sauce served with haricots verts, sugar snap peas, asparagus and fettucine with truffle.
Or
Grilled filled beef with Béarnaise sauce served with green beans and a dauphinoise potato gratin
Or
Seafood lasagne, Salmon and shrimp lasagna served with aniseed sauce, celery, mushroom, spinach and spring onions.
Dessert
We invite you to select your choice of tart, cheese or fresh fruit from our dessert trolley.
White Wine
Vintner’s Blend Chardonnay 2003, Ravenswood, California
Sauvignon Gris 2004, Casa Silva, Chile
Red Wine
Chateau Ferrande 2002, Graves
Shiraz 2004, Bergwater Vineyards, South Africa
Champagne
Piper-Heidsieck, Champagne Brut
Port
Taylor’s 1999
Dessert Wine
Avondale Muscat Blanc 2003, Paarl, South Africa
There’s also a Sky Break snack service for the duration of the flight. None of the options really stood out. The chicken could be interesting, because it’d be reliably bland and tasteless. I love beef though, even though in-flight beef has a deplorable tendency to be way overcooked. Still, feeling brave and not very hungry, I went for the beef.
Push back was reasonably on time, and to my relief we didn’t have to taxi far to the runway either. The plane taking off ahead of us was an SQ Cargo 744, just remind me of the difference between SQ and KL, and gently rub it in. By a quarter to nine we were off for the twelve and a half hour flight to Singapore. One thing that sets take-off apart in the front cabin is the noise of the landing gear being retracted. It made quite a racket, but that was soon forgotten.
After take-off, the guy sitting next to me quickly moved back to row 2, which finally gave me some space (his seat) to store stuff. A bowl of nuts was provided, and I extracted the personal video monitor from the armrest. Much as the seat, it’s a solid top-notch offering for those who live 15 years in the past. The actual display size reminded of the stamp-sized QuickTime demos I used to run on my Mac IIsi about 12 years ago. The viewable area in SQ’s SpaceBeds in Raffles is larger than the entire assembly KL uses, and even then there’s an extra inch to spare. But it’s better than nothing I suppose. Fishing the program guide from the storage area, I discovered that KLM offers a generous choice of no less than 12, count ‘em, a whole dozen video channels. My cup runneth over. No really. At this point I emitted a soft howl as I quietly sobbed in my acute pining for Wisemen and KrisWorld. Recovering my composure, I scanned through the list and decided that the only choice worth watching would be Sideways. As an developing oenophile with fond memories of Napa Valley, the plot looked interesting enough, and it had come recommended by a friend too.
One thing that did surprise me were the headphones, which purport to be of the noise-canceling variety. This was unexpected, as even supposedly premium carriers (BA anyone?) still lack them. If truth be told though, they don’t cancel all that much noise. There’s a switch to toggle the noise canceling function, and while it does make a small difference, it’s not really significant. More marketing than reality.
At this point I feel I should return to the question of the seat. KLM has brochure in the plane that mockingly tells you “how get comfortable” (or words to that effect). As I mentioned earlier, it’d’ve been a solid offering in the dearly departed past, but it’s simply far inferior to the other carriers I have flown in recent years. I love BA’s flat, if narrow, beds. SQ’s SpaceBed may be wide, but at least it’s flat even if not horizontal in the way BA’s is. Some slip-sliding is inevitable on SQ, but it’s tolerable CO has become my carrier of choice on the AMS-NYC route now that SQ has stopped flying that route (almost a year ago; how time flies!). Their seats are neither flat nor horizontal, but at least they are almost flat and fairly soft.
KL’s WBC seats are simply a disgrace. Manual controls throughout – but perhaps this is just as well, as that means there are fewer things that can break. As I tried to become comfortable watching the movie and waiting for dinner with the nuts and wine, I hit the recline button and pushed back on the seat. Then, all too soon, there was the bone-chilling thud that tells you that the seat won’t go back any further and you wonder in despair how you’re ever going to any sleep. Even the slippery slope of the SQ’s SpaceBed is infinitely preferable, or CO’s almost-flat seats. My heart sunk in the realization that this could become a long flight indeed. The footrest shot up ferociously when I pressed the relevant button. But it went hardly high enough though, and pushing it back was required some muscle strength. No problem for me, but the lady in her 50’s seated in 1B was unable to get the footrest back in place without help. This was definitely the worst business class seat I’d flown in since my last KL experience. And to jump slightly ahead to the sleeping bit: I did manage to sleep, but I can’t sleep on my back, so I tossed and turned onto my side as best I could. When I woke up my hips hurt from the pressure that was applied to them, as the seat provides very little support when trying to lie on it sideways. The bulk of my weight therefore ended up resting on my hips, and I could really feel that when I woke up. This was not helped either by the utterly useless pillow that KLM provided; I suspect somebody in the KLM purchasing department by accidentally ordered the In-Flight Pillow, Lilliput Model, Small. There are grades of sandpaper that have softer filling and provide more support.
I was sipping my wine, which perforce was the Graves (as I am not a big fan of Shiraz), the flight attendants were staring to prepare for dinner service. The nuts served earlier were mostly almonds and cashews, with the occasional walnut strewn in for good measure. They were a bit mushy, and not properly salted. I don’t like nuts to be too salty, but this level of salination just gave you a hint of what might have been had they kept the sodium chloride flowing for just half a second longer. The flight attended came by and asked me, “Could you, eh, table?” and motioned me to lift it out of the armrest. I obliged.
The duck appetizer did contain several slices of meat that might at some point have belonged to a member of duck family, but any traces of its intrinsic flavor had long since been expunged. In the grand cosmic scale of airline food it got just about a passing grade. Not my idea of gastronomic bliss though. The main course was presented soon afterwards, although there were intermittent offerings of rolls too. Much as I had feared, the beef was way overcooked. Anything more than medium rare, and it’s a waste of a perfectly good cow. But that’s par for the course on most airlines, so I guess I can’t specifically fault KLM here. However, the whole presentation was less than appetizing. With the potatoes and the gratuitous green stuff, the beef ended up swimming in what looked like an almost-congealing goo of evacuated squirrel intestine. I think I managed to finish about half the steak, and took one stab, literally, at the potatoes.
More wine. The wine itself wasn’t all that great either. I’ve yet to have great wine on a plane, and even BA in F didn’t quite manage to pull that off, but this was just barely potable. Still, it was better than random house wines at bars or supermarkets, so I was not revolted. Hey, I’m looking at the positive side of things here.
Dessert was a choice of chocolate cake. I think the flight attendant mentioned other choices too, but my mind had already frozen at the magic word of chocolate. It was actually OK. Not great, but there’s only so much you can screw up with a dish that contains copious amounts of chocolate. The biggest mistake you can make is not to put enough chocolate in. I also tried the dessert wine, which was acceptable. I think the dessert wines generally adapt better to the low pressure and humidity of aircraft than real wines. I can’t wait to fly the 787 with its better internal climatic conditions.
Having finished dinner, I waited for the movie to end. As the seat next to me was vacant, I was running airshow on the video of that seat while watching the film. It’s always amusing to see which random insignificant town will be highlighted. And the bilingual aspect was taken a bit far. I can deal with Praag, Boedapest and such, but Wilnioes? Ye gods. By the time we were flying over the east of the Ukraine and were close to the Russian border, I was ready to try my luck with sleep.
Before I move on though, I should point out that the rationale for burning miles had become suspect. Various threads on the KL FD board had begun to spring up purporting to provide details of the Flying Blue combined FFP for AF and KL. If those reports are to be believed, then there would be no devaluation of miles at all for KL members. In fact the C redemption which had just cost me 150,000 miles for the returns to SIN would go down to 120,000. Being classically educated, I expressed my dismay with a heartfelt Homeric “Doh!” to myself. (See the Iliad (http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=Perseus:text:1999.01.0133&query=line%3D%23437), book 1, card 386, line 426). This is when the Troy town council votes down Ajax’s cunning plan that was supposed to ruin them by building a Wooden Monorail.
My chronic sleep-deprivation, the late hour and the cumulative alcohol were definitely helping in getting me to sleep. The blanket is decent enough, although as I commented earlier, neither the seat nor the pillow were very conducive to somnolence. But sleep I did. In fits and starts, but I got some sleep. By the time I woke up, we were flying south along the west coast of Thailand, having come in from over Burma, northern India, the many ‘Stans, Russia and Ukraine. Breakfast was coming soon, as the remaining flight time was about an hour and a quarter. There was a bit of a wait at the lavatories, as they were also being used by the economy passengers in the front section.
Breakfast I generally like on flights, although BA’s British breakfasts don’t hit the spot for me. My pre-ordered breakfast arrived as I had ordered. The savoury dish was an omelet with Gruyere cheese, served with fried potatoes, veal sausages and grilled tomato. The sweet dish was pancakes with vanilla sauce garnished with peach and almonds, and naturally this was the choice I had made. It still wasn’t great, but edible. So with the corn flakes, rolls, cheese and yoghurt I had a pretty full breakfast. The usual Delft Blue houses were distributed before the final descent.
Landing was uneventful. There was a bit of turbulence during the descent, but nothing really interesting. We ended up at a relatively distant gate in terminal 1. Two airbridges were connected to the plane, and this time it was to doors 1L and 2L, so I could disembark quickly from the front cabin. Had 1L not been used, it would have been a long wait to get out. I proceeded over the travellators, as the Singaporeans call them, to immigration. I must say that in my experience the Singaporean immigration officials have been the friendliest bunch I have experienced. Today was an exception though: the officer was still carrying on a conversation with a colleague while she checked and stamped my passport. Oh well. No wait though, and I went to the baggage claim area to get my bag.
After a brief while the light started flashing to indicate that bags were coming. To my utter amazement, my bag was the second on the belt. Singaporean efficiency trumps KLM corporate culture! A minute later I was on my way to the Ritz-Carlton in a cab.
Overall my first experience in KLM’s WBC in a few years just confirms my earlier impression. It’s simply not competitive. For the 33 euros and 150,000 miles I paid for this return ticket, I shouldn’t complain. But I totally fail to see why anyone would actually pay KLM thousands of euros when SQ flies the same route, often more cheaply. The comparison between KL and SQ is not even funny. SQ is so far ahead in every respect that any choice to fly KL must be down to either plain ignorance, the straitjacket of corporate travel policies or perhaps much cheaper C fares from other countries. It is totally out of the question that I would fly KL to SIN for business (and there’s a trip coming up soon). I guess people are catching on though. I have been following availability for both the KL and SQ flights on AMS-SIN and vice versa. The SQ flights tended to be full in C, whereas KL had more availability. This is clearly not sustainable for KL.
What I really, really don’t understand is how people can survive a flight this long in coach. Sleeping pills? Hypnosis? The flight in C was tolerable, but even this was a close call.
SIN-KUL
Flight SQ 112, 15:15 Fri 25 Mar 05, Seat 15A, F
The short hop to KUL from SIN is a great way to experience some of the perks of First class on SQ for a small amount of money. Sure, it’s a far cry from long-haul First, but you get to use the F check-in and the F SKL. And per flight I end up with 1,500 miles being credited to my LH M&M account.
Booking the flight was easy. I used the SQ web site to choose my flight, and went through the details quickly. As a KF member, it allowed me to choose which FFP to credit the miles to from the ones you had entered in your profile. Since it’s such a short flight, there are no PPS sectors to be earned anyway, so it doesn’t matter too much. But the 1,500 per leg in the M&M account are certainly worthwhile. I booked two single flights, as the flight from KUL is about US$40 cheaper than the one from SIN to KUL. Having made the booking, I checked in online too, and promptly got a confirmation SMS on my Dutch cell phone. Nice. The only quibble I have with the online check-in is that it had replaced by M&M number with my KF number, and I had to re-enter the M&M number manually. In the booking process it was simply a matter of using the drop-down menu.
The cab took me to the F check-in area of Terminal 2 where SQ resides. I was escorted from the door to the F desks at the back by an SQ employee, who even took my carry-on. It rolls, so it doesn’t matter much, but I still felt slightly embarrassed to have a Singapore Girl take care of my luggage rather than pulling it along myself. The conversation on the way over was one I’ve had many times with Singaporeans: the weather. After the long, dark depressing days of the cold winter I was just savoring the wonderful heat and humidity of Singapore. The locals think I’m nuts. Siau ang moh, what?
I was offered a seat at the check-in desk, and while the agent retrieved my booking, the Singapore Girl who’d escorted me in slipped an SQ F tag on my carry-on. There’s a slightly incongruent point where carry-on is concerned: SQ only allows you take 7 kg. That’s really nothing. Take some basic necessities, a laptop and sundry items, and you’re way over 7 kg. Now I’ve never had a problem with this being enforced when flying SQ, except once in AMS. The gate agents weighed my carry-on, and it came to 13 kg, and made a huge fuss over it. Only by the grace of the kindness of their hearts would they allow me to take it on board. Strictly speaking, they were right on the rules, but their attitude was shocking. Treating a PPS member flying Raffles like this is simply not a good idea; of course they weren’t SQ staff, but contract staff, who after checking in the SQ flight would no doubt go to do the same for some third-rate carrier from Crashalotstan.
Anyway, no problem here at all. The staff were very friendly and efficient, and even got me my return boarding card for the flight back the next day. I was also supplied with Malaysian and Singaporean immigration forms. I quickly moved through the emigration desk, and went up to the SKL. I hadn’t been there in six months, and for some reason I almost took a left turn into the Raffles area. Oh, the horror! When I could be in F… the lounge was much as I remember it, and not too many people present either. I found a nice table, and went off in search of satay. The satay in the SKL is always one of the highlights of my stays in the lounge and I was shattered to the core of my being to find that there wasn’t any! I decided to get the next best thing, whiskey, and drown my sorrows.
During check-in the Singapore Girls made a point, very politely, that I should go the gate on time. SQ and Changi seem to be obsessed with punctuality now. It’s been mentioned on the SQ board, but seeing this for myself was something else. Boarding time as printed on the boarding pass was 14:45, so around that time I decided to trundle down to the gate. At this point, the monitor in the lounge was already blaring in red that gate was closing. As an inveterate traveler, I was unconcerned for the most part, and went to the gate somewhere off in the depths of the F pier. When I got there five minutes later, a line still snaked from the security checkpoint. The monitor ominously growled “Final Call.”
This is self-defeating. People who fly more than once a year out of Changi will catch on. It’s certainly not changing my habits in terms of going to the gate.
Boarding commenced shortly after I had battled my way to the door, and upon entering the plane through door 1L I made a right turn and found my seat. No problem stowing my carry-on bag in the overhead compartment either, I should add, and the cabin crew actually wanted to help me put it there. A pre-flight drink was offered, with a choice of water or juice. We pushed back relatively quickly, and were in the air a few minutes later.
Hot towels were distributed, and I marveled at the seat. This wasn’t the SpaceBed, but the older Ultimo seat. It looked eerily similar to the KL seat I had been in a day earlier, except that the controls here were electric. This truly encapsulates how far behind KL really is: SQ offers better seats on a 40 minute hop to KUL than KL does on a 13 hour flight.
Since it’s such a short flight though, it’s always astounding to see the cabin crew do the F service. With 10 minutes on climb out and 10 minutes for landing, it leaves perhaps 15 minutes to serve the snack and drinks and clear them again. The snack choices were either turkey salad or chicken in pita bread. I opted for the turkey salad, which was small bits of diced turkey with diced cheese and some greenery. It was OK, although rather dry, and some bread or rolls would have been a great addition. I had some pineapple juice to go with it.
Before long the trays were cleared and we started the uneventful descent into KUL. The taxi to the gate wasn’t too long and we arrived at the habitual resting place for SQ flights. It’s a very short walk to the train that takes you to the main terminal. Again, an uneventful ride took me there, just as the skies were opening up for one of those torrential tropical downpours that are inevitable in the hot and humid weather. There was no line at immigration either, so using the priority lane would not have been necessary, but it was at hand so I just went through there. A quick X-ray scan of my carry-on bag took me through customs, although they never actually took my customs stub.
I bought a taxi ticket to the Mandarin Oriental, and was shortly on my way.
KUL-SIN
Flight SQ 111, 14:20 Sat 26 Mar 05, Seat 12A, F
As I was already in possession of my boarding pass, I went straight to the emigration lines at KUL. It’s always a bit of a crap shoot trying to find the best option in terms of waiting time. I did have my Priority Lane pass as I was flying in F, but I decided to take one of the other lines as they appeared to be shorter. The officer helpfully pointed out that I was entitled to the Priority Lane, so rather than trying to explain my wait-minimization gambit I thanked him and told him I’d use it next time. I once got stuck in the Priority Lane (or is it Premier Lane?) for an inordinate amount of time, while the normal lanes were moving apace.
The SQ lounge is past the other lounges, up one level from the gates. It’s an OK lounge, though nothing really to write home about. I guess I could have tried the Thai *G lounge too, but there was not much time and after a few slices of cake and a drink, I was on my way to the gate. The security check was quick, boarding followed within a few minutes, and as usual, SQ 111 was served by a 777 with the Raffles SpaceBeds in F. Not having had much sleep the previous night, I was sorely tempted to take a nap with the seat flat, but it was not to be. The meal service consisted of a choice of beef in pita bread, or a chicken dish if memory serves. I had the beef, which was actually not bad, and made for an excellent afternoon snack on the short flight to SIN.
About 15 minutes from SIN the pilot announced that there’d be some turbulence ahead, so the seatbelt sign went on. My tray had been cleared by this point, and I was dozing with the SpaceBed flat. The pilot certain wasn’t kidding; the turbulence we hit was the worst I’d ever experienced in a wide-body jet. People screamed as the plane dropped for a few seconds through the turbulent air. It disrupted my nap, but provided for fantastic entertainment.
The landing itself was pretty smooth, and after a short taxi we were back at the gate. The immigration officer was back to the usual Singapore friendly standard, and within a few minutes I was back in another cab on my way to the Ritz-Carlton.
SIN-AMS
Flight KL 838, 22:55 Mon 28 Mar 05, Seat 77A, WBC
The sad part of travel is that you have to go back home too. The Dutch climate is not exactly conducive to much rejoicing when the time comes to return, and after dinner at the hotel, I went out to the pool area and just lay down on a lounger and stared at the stars for half an hour. The wonderful, glorious warmth of the Singapore evening suffused me, and it was with great sadness and reluctance that I got up and went to get a cab.
At the airport I wistfully looked on as the cab drove past the right turn to Terminal 2, where the SQ flights depart from, and was dropped off at Terminal 1. I had used the online check-in to change my seat assignment from 1K to 77A. The experience of sitting downstairs hadn’t appealed to me too much, so I opted for the exit row on the upper deck. The slight forward view that is afforded in row 1 is nice to have, but not all that exciting either.
I was quickly provided with a boarding card and I headed through emigration, which in turn too was quick and efficient. After that there was a bit of a dilemma. The CIAS lounge KL uses is pretty awful, so rather than spend too much time there I strolled through some shops and went to sit by the pool under the warm Singapore sky for a bit longer.
I did go to the lounge for a while to get a drink, but it was a pretty sorry affair. Limited selection of drinks and food, and not much space either. Altogether a dreary and claustrophobic experience. I was not in the best of moods to begin with, as the departure from warm and sunny places back to cold and rainy Amsterdam always places a bit of a drain on my demeanor.
Time drew closer to departure, and reluctantly I dragged myself off to the gate. A long line was still present at the security check, and no sign of a priority line for business class or elite passengers. So I morosely shuffled to the tail end, and waited for my turn at the X-ray machines. Fortunately boarding commenced quickly after this, and I was the first to make it on the plane. I went up the stairs, and to my surprise, the carry-on bag still would not fit in the overhead bins. I could have sworn I had no such problems on BA’s 744’s, but now I am not longer sure. My bag had to be stowed in the closet.
At least the upper deck provides the nice storage bins next to the seats, so I took the most important items out of the bag and stowed them there. The cabin looked about half full, and 77B next to me was empty too. The breakfast menus were distributed once again, with the same options as on the way out. The sweet meal was different though, being some kind of crème brulee.
The flight attendants came by with the same garish amenity kit, and also told us that there would be no dinner menus distributed, as they said they were “completely wrong.” So we were offered a choice of beef or salmon. I took the salmon, but with a pretty big dinner already in me, I was sure I wasn’t going to need it. Nuts were provided, as was the wine. I had a Californian Cabernet Sauvignon of otherwise unknown provenance, and of the movie choices I settled on The Final Cut, with the ever-annoying Robin Williams.
I’ve entirely forgotten what the appetizer was. The salmon was better than I had expected, with a certain spicy tinge to it. Still, it wasn’t all that great and I wasn’t feeling hungry anyway. Dessert consisted solely of what were I think Leonidas chocolates from a box. No other choices, no cheese, no ice cream, no nothing. Looks like there was a major snafu in the catering for this flight. I suppose that perhaps I should complain, but if I complained about every KLM problem I encountered, I’d have very little time left for, oh, sleep, life, work and other piddling details.
Once the movie was over, I donned my Gleaming Silver eyeshades and went to sleep. I woke up while we were passing just over northern Afghanistan. I went to the lavatory, and on my way back, one of the flight attendants saw me. He came over and asked if I wanted anything eat or drink. A nice attentive touch. Back to sleep.
Breakfast was similar to the outbound flight, but this time was served over western Poland. The hot sweet dish I had was not very good, but the other items provided sufficient sustenance for me to survive a bit longer. I collected another Delft Blue house to add to the stash I have somewhere.
Inevitably, we landed on the dreaded Polderbaan. This is the runway that’s conveniently located in another city, making pilots do double duty as taxi drivers before and after landing. The distance from the Polderbaan to the terminal is about 8 km, or 5 miles. To put this into (Dutch) perspective, that’s a taxi in a plane that takes you east about 4% of the broadest width of the country. Do a take-off or landing 25 times from the Polderbaan, and you’ve driven across the width of the Netherlands in a plane. Check.
The weather was very Dutch indeed. 5 degrees C (40-ish F), gray, cold, drizzly, damp, dank, depressing. Ah, it’s great to be home. Before we even reached the gate, I started thinking about the next trip.
We finally arrived at the end of the F pier, so a bit of a walk ensued to immigration. As there were no lines, I just went through the old-fashioned way using my passport, as this is marginally faster than going the Privium iris scan given the circumstances. The bags were supposed to arrive on the same belt as the ones from an earlier flight from Houston. A slightly later flight from Lagos was also to disgorge its bags on the same belt. I was hoping to avoid that crush.
Being back in Amsterdam, any vestigial effects that Singaporean efficiency might have had on KLM operations had long since worn off. Priority tags on the bags meant truly nothing, as there seemed neither rhyme nor reason to the dispersion of the prioritized luggage. My bag came out five or six minutes after the first one, so it was not too bad I suppose. As usual coming from Singapore, I was hassled by the customs agents, but this time I survived without having my bags checked. Not that I had any contraband on me for a change; only the Borders store at Wheelock Place did some good additional business as a result of my visit.
Overall, my initial conclusion stands: I don’t see why people would want to pay thousands of euros for KL business class, when for the same price you can get SQ. Sometimes for less even. It boggles the mind, but then again, perhaps my mind is easily boggled.
Still, it was great to have been back in Singapore and KL, and I do hope to return there again soon!
PS: Stay reports for the Ritz-Carlton in Singapore and Mandarin Oriental in Kuala Lumpur will be forthcoming.
With the prospect of yet another rainy weekend in Holland over Easter, and the two days off we get (Friday and Monday), the urge to escape the dreary outlook started to become irresistible. So I decided to look for a long weekend trip to someplace warm and sunny, and to take Thursday off as well.
Really warm weather this time of year still requires substantial travel, as anything within Europe is not going to cut it. My usual haunt in Florida was not available, so I decided to look south first, to Cape Town. The weather forecast and climatology data seemed OK, but I could not find suitable award seats on KLM.
Why KLM you ask? The main reason is the huge pile of miles I had racked up in my Flying Dutchman account. With the prospect of the merger of AF’s Frequence Plus and FD coming ever closer, it seemed more than reasonable to assume that existing miles under the new scheme would end up being devalued. The great inflationary pressure of printing fiat miles would also prove to be a motive force in nudging AF to make the new scheme less attractive. So I decided to burn some of my miles.
Award availability for KLM falls in the D bucket so checking for awards was not too hard, as long as the data supplied online was indeed correct. With Cape Town out of the picture, it was time to look further east, and nearer the equator. I tried, BKK, KUL and SIN, and amazingly, the latter showed D9 on Wednesday 23rd and D5 on Monday 28th. Perfect – I could leave Wednesday night and be back on Tuesday morning. Rather gamble with the KLM web site, I decided to call the infamous Flying Dutchman Hinderdesk to book the ticket. All in all, it was an amazingly painless exercise, as they booked it quickly and without hassle, contradiction, confusion or condescension. They promised to email me a confirmation too. What was even better was that the random number generator that purports calculate taxes on award tickets came up with the princely sum of 33 euros. Given the perennial stream of complaints on the KL forum here, I was truly blessed. The only problem, as I saw it, was that it’d be a paper ticket, so I had to pick it up at Schiphol before the flight. I expressed my surprise that it wasn’t going to be an e-ticket, but nothing could be done about that.
One of KLM’s entries for the global “Shoot Yourself In The Foot” contest is the on-line check-in procedure, which requires the ticket number. Not the booking reference or PNR, but the actual ticket number. Not only is this an unwieldy long sequence of digits, but with some e-tickets it’s hard to find, and with my paper ticket waiting for me at Schiphol, there was no way I could check-in early online and snag a good seat. By the time evening rolled around, I still had not received the promised confirmation from KLM by email. Fearing the worst, I called again, but to my relief they managed to send me the confirmation quickly. What happened on the first attempt shall forever remain unknown.
One day before departure I hopped over to the airport to get my ticket. I got there around 7 pm, and the ticketing office was a huge scrum. In order to impose some form of order, there is a machine dispensing tickets with numbers on them. Match the number to the one that lights up on the displays, and you can proceed to be, well, helped, one should guess. The machine also contains a note that FD Platinum Elite members can go straight to the Platinum desk on the left, without the need to wait for your number to come up. This is great of course, except there’s only one Platinum counter and no place to form an orderly line. So it turns into a bit of a random shuffle. And since there’s only one desk, if the guy in front of you ends up with a complicated ticketing issue, you could be waiting for a long time. Morale: always get a number. In this instance it wasn’t so bad, especially considering there were so few people working the rest of the ticketing counters.
I handed over my credit card to pay the 33 euros, and was handed an itinerary in return, with a confirmation of my e-ticket. I blinked. If I’d known it’d be an e-ticket, I could have handled the tax payment on the phone too, without having to come out to the airport in the first place. On the other hand, it did slightly put the world back to rights again, as the KLM FD helpdesk had managed to screw things up after all, even if only slightly.
The availability for the outbound flight did not change at from all 9’s in business. Even D remained stuck at 9, but I find it hard to believe that there were actually 9 award seats plus mine (plus others?) available. In the inbound flight from SIN showed D5 before booking and went down to D0 thereafter. It’s hard to tell whether this is due to the innate vagaries of KLM’s erratic computer systems, or whether this is the carefully though-out result of an algorithm that was devised by a gaggle of operational research PhD’s that KLM keeps entombed in a vault deep inside Holland’s tallest mountain. Considering the latter is a speedbump of about 1,000ft in total height, it’s probably both.
Ticket number now known, I went home and checked right in. I’d often been on the upper deck on 747’s on various airlines, but I’ve never been up front on the lower deck. The seat guides on the web claim that the seats there afford a nice semi-forward view, so I decided to go for 1K, which I duly obtained.
Phew. Just one more day at work to survive.
AMS-SIN
Flight KL 837, 20:30 Wed 23 Mar 05, Seat 1K, World Business Class
Knowing that soon I would be on my way to Singapore, a serene calm was upon me during the day. I left the office early at 5:45pm, went home, took a quick shower and change of clothes, and was at the airport by 7pm or so. Rather than negotiate the madding crowds at the bag-drop off for the self-service check-in machines, I went to the long-haul business counters just opposite the ticket office. I dropped my bag off, and got my boarding card. Theoretically I could have printed a boarding card using online check-in, but the pdf files that the KLM website produces have been, right from the start, unprintable. And I’ve tried printing on 8 different printers, so I doubt it’s a printer issue. Perhaps an Acrobat issue. No luck thus far though.
The check-in process was entirely painless. No wait at all, just the bag being tagged with the usual barcode and a perfunctory priority label. Priority for elites or business class passengers on KLM is theoretically available, but seldom materializes in practice.
I whipped out my Privium pass to go through the iris-scan border check, and was through in no time at all. As usual, nobody asked me to see my boarding card. From here it was to the left and up to the Crown lounge to imbibe some alcohol and feast on the graciously provided cheese and crackers. There has recently been a change in the cracker provider, going from Wasa to a Dutch brand whose name I should know but always forget. No big deal though. The lounge was quite full, but not to the point that finding a spot to sit became a problem. In the mornings the KLM lounges can be utterly packed; only the LH lounges in Frankfurt seem to have a worse chronic overcrowding problem.
I got my 30 minutes of complimentary internet connection as Platinum FD member (renewable for free every half hour), and did some quick email checking and web browsing. It was around 40 minutes before the scheduled departure time that I headed to gate F3. The monitors were showing the flight was boarding, which in practice meant that it was pre-boarding. Since I was going to the gate somewhat late, the long lines had all but disappeared with people now waiting in the boarding area. I walked straight to the door leading to the jetway and waited there for a few minutes for the boarding to start. I was the first through, as most of the others had been sitting. In my usual absent-mindedness I almost missed the left turn to the front door, which in this case was 2L. This is the one near the stairs leading to the upper deck, so my seat was well forward. It also means going through the half-width economy section that sits between the stairs and the front business cabin. The plane, I should mention, was a 747 Combi, meaning that a good chunk of the aft compartment was used for cargo.
Onwards and forwards, I arrive in the World Business Class cabin of a KLM plane for the first time in years. My earlier experiences with WBC have led me to avoid KLM for long-haul, so it’ll be an interesting experience to see how KLM fares after having done many flights on BA, CO and SQ. It will be very hard to avoid comparing KL to SQ on this particular route, and on first impressions SQ of course wins hands down. No Singapore Girls to be seen on KL of course! ;) I thought back to my previous trip to Singapore, on SQ. I was still chatting on the phone before the doors had closed, and was gently told by a Singapore Girl, “Sorry sir, you must off the handphone.” I felt like I was in Singapore already without even leaving the ground in Amsterdam. Ah, bliss.
The amount of bliss on KL flights is rather more limited. First order of business was stowing my carry-on, and this, as they say, turned out to be a non-trivial undertaking. I will readily admit that my carry-on bag is slightly pushing the limits of what is allowable, but not by much. I also knew, based on my consultations with seatexpert.com and seatguru.com that the overhead bins for row 1 would be smaller. However, my carry-on would not fit into any of the overhead bins in the front cabin. This came as bit of a shock, because on long-haul I’ve never had a problem cramming it in. In fact, even on CO’s 737’s I can easily fit it in overhead. So I took the next best option, and put it in the closet in the front of the cabin.
The seats were the standard KLM WBC seats. A solid, modern, world-class offering about 15 years ago. Being in the first row, I had additional leg room, but on the other hand, there was no space to stow any items near or around the seat. This is incredibly annoying, of course. The purser came by to welcome me on board, and I was offered a choice of water, juice or champagne. I took the latter, and was not impressed with the quality. A bit later the flight attendant who’d be serving me came back with the amenity and shortly thereafter, the breakfast menu and dinner menu. Other passengers were slowing filling up the cabin, and unfortunately the seat next to me was taken too. However, as I put my shoes up in the overhead bin, I saw that row 2 was empty, so there was hope yet.
The last amenity kit I remember from KLM was a tin box, which was an interesting concept and worked reasonably well. Not content with having any part of the WBC experience being merely good when it could be silly, KLM must have decided to up the ante. The contents are still OK, although the ever-expensive shoe-horn has gone missing. The new kit is a rectangular bag of synthetic fiber with a carrying loop at one end, and a zipper running along the top. The design aesthetic is best described as appealing the demographic of 14-year old high school girls (prime customers in WBC, obviously). The fluorescent disco blue provides just that little pathetic twist to an otherwise already effeminate look. I should also mention the Glam Rock version of the eye mask, which was furnished in Glittering Silver. When the cabin lights are dimmed, and you have a laser pointer, you can sweep it over the cabin, and recreate a scene out of the Outer Limits – Invasion of the Silver Strip Eyed Monsters From Beta Eridani. I must say, this is the worst-looking amenity kit I have received in a long time.
While the purser had addressed me in Dutch, the flight attendant spoke English to me. I generally just answer back in whatever language I am spoken to (within reason), and as I had an inkling that her English might be lacking based on the first exchange, I decided to keep the rest of the communication Anglophone too. My suspicions, based on these first few words she spoke, soon turned out to be correct. Her English was passable, and enough to handle her duties, but it was insufficiently idiomatic to provide polite service. I noted at least three instances in which her English verged on the rude; not necessarily because she was rude (well, she was Dutch, so the baseline is different to begin with), but simply because she was unable to express herself properly and therefore ended up being curt, vague and possibly rude. As a slight tangent, after a European KLM flight, I said goodbye to a flight attendant in Dutch, having spoken to her in English the entire flight. She was actually offended that I had made her speak English the whole time! Astounding.
My next interaction with the flight attendant was when she came to exhort us to fill out the breakfast menu. You can choose whether you want plain or fruit yoghurt, muesli or corn flakes, cheese platter yes or no, strawberry or apricot jam, and the sweet or savory hot item. A final box allows you to tell them whether they should wake you for breakfast. A slightly unorthodox system, but it does allow for faster breakfast service, and hence longer sleep. So even before ordering dinner, I had ordered breakfast.
The dinner menu was as follows:
Appetiser
Smoked duck breast served with a date and fig compote
Main Courses
Chicken breast with morel sauce served with haricots verts, sugar snap peas, asparagus and fettucine with truffle.
Or
Grilled filled beef with Béarnaise sauce served with green beans and a dauphinoise potato gratin
Or
Seafood lasagne, Salmon and shrimp lasagna served with aniseed sauce, celery, mushroom, spinach and spring onions.
Dessert
We invite you to select your choice of tart, cheese or fresh fruit from our dessert trolley.
White Wine
Vintner’s Blend Chardonnay 2003, Ravenswood, California
Sauvignon Gris 2004, Casa Silva, Chile
Red Wine
Chateau Ferrande 2002, Graves
Shiraz 2004, Bergwater Vineyards, South Africa
Champagne
Piper-Heidsieck, Champagne Brut
Port
Taylor’s 1999
Dessert Wine
Avondale Muscat Blanc 2003, Paarl, South Africa
There’s also a Sky Break snack service for the duration of the flight. None of the options really stood out. The chicken could be interesting, because it’d be reliably bland and tasteless. I love beef though, even though in-flight beef has a deplorable tendency to be way overcooked. Still, feeling brave and not very hungry, I went for the beef.
Push back was reasonably on time, and to my relief we didn’t have to taxi far to the runway either. The plane taking off ahead of us was an SQ Cargo 744, just remind me of the difference between SQ and KL, and gently rub it in. By a quarter to nine we were off for the twelve and a half hour flight to Singapore. One thing that sets take-off apart in the front cabin is the noise of the landing gear being retracted. It made quite a racket, but that was soon forgotten.
After take-off, the guy sitting next to me quickly moved back to row 2, which finally gave me some space (his seat) to store stuff. A bowl of nuts was provided, and I extracted the personal video monitor from the armrest. Much as the seat, it’s a solid top-notch offering for those who live 15 years in the past. The actual display size reminded of the stamp-sized QuickTime demos I used to run on my Mac IIsi about 12 years ago. The viewable area in SQ’s SpaceBeds in Raffles is larger than the entire assembly KL uses, and even then there’s an extra inch to spare. But it’s better than nothing I suppose. Fishing the program guide from the storage area, I discovered that KLM offers a generous choice of no less than 12, count ‘em, a whole dozen video channels. My cup runneth over. No really. At this point I emitted a soft howl as I quietly sobbed in my acute pining for Wisemen and KrisWorld. Recovering my composure, I scanned through the list and decided that the only choice worth watching would be Sideways. As an developing oenophile with fond memories of Napa Valley, the plot looked interesting enough, and it had come recommended by a friend too.
One thing that did surprise me were the headphones, which purport to be of the noise-canceling variety. This was unexpected, as even supposedly premium carriers (BA anyone?) still lack them. If truth be told though, they don’t cancel all that much noise. There’s a switch to toggle the noise canceling function, and while it does make a small difference, it’s not really significant. More marketing than reality.
At this point I feel I should return to the question of the seat. KLM has brochure in the plane that mockingly tells you “how get comfortable” (or words to that effect). As I mentioned earlier, it’d’ve been a solid offering in the dearly departed past, but it’s simply far inferior to the other carriers I have flown in recent years. I love BA’s flat, if narrow, beds. SQ’s SpaceBed may be wide, but at least it’s flat even if not horizontal in the way BA’s is. Some slip-sliding is inevitable on SQ, but it’s tolerable CO has become my carrier of choice on the AMS-NYC route now that SQ has stopped flying that route (almost a year ago; how time flies!). Their seats are neither flat nor horizontal, but at least they are almost flat and fairly soft.
KL’s WBC seats are simply a disgrace. Manual controls throughout – but perhaps this is just as well, as that means there are fewer things that can break. As I tried to become comfortable watching the movie and waiting for dinner with the nuts and wine, I hit the recline button and pushed back on the seat. Then, all too soon, there was the bone-chilling thud that tells you that the seat won’t go back any further and you wonder in despair how you’re ever going to any sleep. Even the slippery slope of the SQ’s SpaceBed is infinitely preferable, or CO’s almost-flat seats. My heart sunk in the realization that this could become a long flight indeed. The footrest shot up ferociously when I pressed the relevant button. But it went hardly high enough though, and pushing it back was required some muscle strength. No problem for me, but the lady in her 50’s seated in 1B was unable to get the footrest back in place without help. This was definitely the worst business class seat I’d flown in since my last KL experience. And to jump slightly ahead to the sleeping bit: I did manage to sleep, but I can’t sleep on my back, so I tossed and turned onto my side as best I could. When I woke up my hips hurt from the pressure that was applied to them, as the seat provides very little support when trying to lie on it sideways. The bulk of my weight therefore ended up resting on my hips, and I could really feel that when I woke up. This was not helped either by the utterly useless pillow that KLM provided; I suspect somebody in the KLM purchasing department by accidentally ordered the In-Flight Pillow, Lilliput Model, Small. There are grades of sandpaper that have softer filling and provide more support.
I was sipping my wine, which perforce was the Graves (as I am not a big fan of Shiraz), the flight attendants were staring to prepare for dinner service. The nuts served earlier were mostly almonds and cashews, with the occasional walnut strewn in for good measure. They were a bit mushy, and not properly salted. I don’t like nuts to be too salty, but this level of salination just gave you a hint of what might have been had they kept the sodium chloride flowing for just half a second longer. The flight attended came by and asked me, “Could you, eh, table?” and motioned me to lift it out of the armrest. I obliged.
The duck appetizer did contain several slices of meat that might at some point have belonged to a member of duck family, but any traces of its intrinsic flavor had long since been expunged. In the grand cosmic scale of airline food it got just about a passing grade. Not my idea of gastronomic bliss though. The main course was presented soon afterwards, although there were intermittent offerings of rolls too. Much as I had feared, the beef was way overcooked. Anything more than medium rare, and it’s a waste of a perfectly good cow. But that’s par for the course on most airlines, so I guess I can’t specifically fault KLM here. However, the whole presentation was less than appetizing. With the potatoes and the gratuitous green stuff, the beef ended up swimming in what looked like an almost-congealing goo of evacuated squirrel intestine. I think I managed to finish about half the steak, and took one stab, literally, at the potatoes.
More wine. The wine itself wasn’t all that great either. I’ve yet to have great wine on a plane, and even BA in F didn’t quite manage to pull that off, but this was just barely potable. Still, it was better than random house wines at bars or supermarkets, so I was not revolted. Hey, I’m looking at the positive side of things here.
Dessert was a choice of chocolate cake. I think the flight attendant mentioned other choices too, but my mind had already frozen at the magic word of chocolate. It was actually OK. Not great, but there’s only so much you can screw up with a dish that contains copious amounts of chocolate. The biggest mistake you can make is not to put enough chocolate in. I also tried the dessert wine, which was acceptable. I think the dessert wines generally adapt better to the low pressure and humidity of aircraft than real wines. I can’t wait to fly the 787 with its better internal climatic conditions.
Having finished dinner, I waited for the movie to end. As the seat next to me was vacant, I was running airshow on the video of that seat while watching the film. It’s always amusing to see which random insignificant town will be highlighted. And the bilingual aspect was taken a bit far. I can deal with Praag, Boedapest and such, but Wilnioes? Ye gods. By the time we were flying over the east of the Ukraine and were close to the Russian border, I was ready to try my luck with sleep.
Before I move on though, I should point out that the rationale for burning miles had become suspect. Various threads on the KL FD board had begun to spring up purporting to provide details of the Flying Blue combined FFP for AF and KL. If those reports are to be believed, then there would be no devaluation of miles at all for KL members. In fact the C redemption which had just cost me 150,000 miles for the returns to SIN would go down to 120,000. Being classically educated, I expressed my dismay with a heartfelt Homeric “Doh!” to myself. (See the Iliad (http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=Perseus:text:1999.01.0133&query=line%3D%23437), book 1, card 386, line 426). This is when the Troy town council votes down Ajax’s cunning plan that was supposed to ruin them by building a Wooden Monorail.
My chronic sleep-deprivation, the late hour and the cumulative alcohol were definitely helping in getting me to sleep. The blanket is decent enough, although as I commented earlier, neither the seat nor the pillow were very conducive to somnolence. But sleep I did. In fits and starts, but I got some sleep. By the time I woke up, we were flying south along the west coast of Thailand, having come in from over Burma, northern India, the many ‘Stans, Russia and Ukraine. Breakfast was coming soon, as the remaining flight time was about an hour and a quarter. There was a bit of a wait at the lavatories, as they were also being used by the economy passengers in the front section.
Breakfast I generally like on flights, although BA’s British breakfasts don’t hit the spot for me. My pre-ordered breakfast arrived as I had ordered. The savoury dish was an omelet with Gruyere cheese, served with fried potatoes, veal sausages and grilled tomato. The sweet dish was pancakes with vanilla sauce garnished with peach and almonds, and naturally this was the choice I had made. It still wasn’t great, but edible. So with the corn flakes, rolls, cheese and yoghurt I had a pretty full breakfast. The usual Delft Blue houses were distributed before the final descent.
Landing was uneventful. There was a bit of turbulence during the descent, but nothing really interesting. We ended up at a relatively distant gate in terminal 1. Two airbridges were connected to the plane, and this time it was to doors 1L and 2L, so I could disembark quickly from the front cabin. Had 1L not been used, it would have been a long wait to get out. I proceeded over the travellators, as the Singaporeans call them, to immigration. I must say that in my experience the Singaporean immigration officials have been the friendliest bunch I have experienced. Today was an exception though: the officer was still carrying on a conversation with a colleague while she checked and stamped my passport. Oh well. No wait though, and I went to the baggage claim area to get my bag.
After a brief while the light started flashing to indicate that bags were coming. To my utter amazement, my bag was the second on the belt. Singaporean efficiency trumps KLM corporate culture! A minute later I was on my way to the Ritz-Carlton in a cab.
Overall my first experience in KLM’s WBC in a few years just confirms my earlier impression. It’s simply not competitive. For the 33 euros and 150,000 miles I paid for this return ticket, I shouldn’t complain. But I totally fail to see why anyone would actually pay KLM thousands of euros when SQ flies the same route, often more cheaply. The comparison between KL and SQ is not even funny. SQ is so far ahead in every respect that any choice to fly KL must be down to either plain ignorance, the straitjacket of corporate travel policies or perhaps much cheaper C fares from other countries. It is totally out of the question that I would fly KL to SIN for business (and there’s a trip coming up soon). I guess people are catching on though. I have been following availability for both the KL and SQ flights on AMS-SIN and vice versa. The SQ flights tended to be full in C, whereas KL had more availability. This is clearly not sustainable for KL.
What I really, really don’t understand is how people can survive a flight this long in coach. Sleeping pills? Hypnosis? The flight in C was tolerable, but even this was a close call.
SIN-KUL
Flight SQ 112, 15:15 Fri 25 Mar 05, Seat 15A, F
The short hop to KUL from SIN is a great way to experience some of the perks of First class on SQ for a small amount of money. Sure, it’s a far cry from long-haul First, but you get to use the F check-in and the F SKL. And per flight I end up with 1,500 miles being credited to my LH M&M account.
Booking the flight was easy. I used the SQ web site to choose my flight, and went through the details quickly. As a KF member, it allowed me to choose which FFP to credit the miles to from the ones you had entered in your profile. Since it’s such a short flight, there are no PPS sectors to be earned anyway, so it doesn’t matter too much. But the 1,500 per leg in the M&M account are certainly worthwhile. I booked two single flights, as the flight from KUL is about US$40 cheaper than the one from SIN to KUL. Having made the booking, I checked in online too, and promptly got a confirmation SMS on my Dutch cell phone. Nice. The only quibble I have with the online check-in is that it had replaced by M&M number with my KF number, and I had to re-enter the M&M number manually. In the booking process it was simply a matter of using the drop-down menu.
The cab took me to the F check-in area of Terminal 2 where SQ resides. I was escorted from the door to the F desks at the back by an SQ employee, who even took my carry-on. It rolls, so it doesn’t matter much, but I still felt slightly embarrassed to have a Singapore Girl take care of my luggage rather than pulling it along myself. The conversation on the way over was one I’ve had many times with Singaporeans: the weather. After the long, dark depressing days of the cold winter I was just savoring the wonderful heat and humidity of Singapore. The locals think I’m nuts. Siau ang moh, what?
I was offered a seat at the check-in desk, and while the agent retrieved my booking, the Singapore Girl who’d escorted me in slipped an SQ F tag on my carry-on. There’s a slightly incongruent point where carry-on is concerned: SQ only allows you take 7 kg. That’s really nothing. Take some basic necessities, a laptop and sundry items, and you’re way over 7 kg. Now I’ve never had a problem with this being enforced when flying SQ, except once in AMS. The gate agents weighed my carry-on, and it came to 13 kg, and made a huge fuss over it. Only by the grace of the kindness of their hearts would they allow me to take it on board. Strictly speaking, they were right on the rules, but their attitude was shocking. Treating a PPS member flying Raffles like this is simply not a good idea; of course they weren’t SQ staff, but contract staff, who after checking in the SQ flight would no doubt go to do the same for some third-rate carrier from Crashalotstan.
Anyway, no problem here at all. The staff were very friendly and efficient, and even got me my return boarding card for the flight back the next day. I was also supplied with Malaysian and Singaporean immigration forms. I quickly moved through the emigration desk, and went up to the SKL. I hadn’t been there in six months, and for some reason I almost took a left turn into the Raffles area. Oh, the horror! When I could be in F… the lounge was much as I remember it, and not too many people present either. I found a nice table, and went off in search of satay. The satay in the SKL is always one of the highlights of my stays in the lounge and I was shattered to the core of my being to find that there wasn’t any! I decided to get the next best thing, whiskey, and drown my sorrows.
During check-in the Singapore Girls made a point, very politely, that I should go the gate on time. SQ and Changi seem to be obsessed with punctuality now. It’s been mentioned on the SQ board, but seeing this for myself was something else. Boarding time as printed on the boarding pass was 14:45, so around that time I decided to trundle down to the gate. At this point, the monitor in the lounge was already blaring in red that gate was closing. As an inveterate traveler, I was unconcerned for the most part, and went to the gate somewhere off in the depths of the F pier. When I got there five minutes later, a line still snaked from the security checkpoint. The monitor ominously growled “Final Call.”
This is self-defeating. People who fly more than once a year out of Changi will catch on. It’s certainly not changing my habits in terms of going to the gate.
Boarding commenced shortly after I had battled my way to the door, and upon entering the plane through door 1L I made a right turn and found my seat. No problem stowing my carry-on bag in the overhead compartment either, I should add, and the cabin crew actually wanted to help me put it there. A pre-flight drink was offered, with a choice of water or juice. We pushed back relatively quickly, and were in the air a few minutes later.
Hot towels were distributed, and I marveled at the seat. This wasn’t the SpaceBed, but the older Ultimo seat. It looked eerily similar to the KL seat I had been in a day earlier, except that the controls here were electric. This truly encapsulates how far behind KL really is: SQ offers better seats on a 40 minute hop to KUL than KL does on a 13 hour flight.
Since it’s such a short flight though, it’s always astounding to see the cabin crew do the F service. With 10 minutes on climb out and 10 minutes for landing, it leaves perhaps 15 minutes to serve the snack and drinks and clear them again. The snack choices were either turkey salad or chicken in pita bread. I opted for the turkey salad, which was small bits of diced turkey with diced cheese and some greenery. It was OK, although rather dry, and some bread or rolls would have been a great addition. I had some pineapple juice to go with it.
Before long the trays were cleared and we started the uneventful descent into KUL. The taxi to the gate wasn’t too long and we arrived at the habitual resting place for SQ flights. It’s a very short walk to the train that takes you to the main terminal. Again, an uneventful ride took me there, just as the skies were opening up for one of those torrential tropical downpours that are inevitable in the hot and humid weather. There was no line at immigration either, so using the priority lane would not have been necessary, but it was at hand so I just went through there. A quick X-ray scan of my carry-on bag took me through customs, although they never actually took my customs stub.
I bought a taxi ticket to the Mandarin Oriental, and was shortly on my way.
KUL-SIN
Flight SQ 111, 14:20 Sat 26 Mar 05, Seat 12A, F
As I was already in possession of my boarding pass, I went straight to the emigration lines at KUL. It’s always a bit of a crap shoot trying to find the best option in terms of waiting time. I did have my Priority Lane pass as I was flying in F, but I decided to take one of the other lines as they appeared to be shorter. The officer helpfully pointed out that I was entitled to the Priority Lane, so rather than trying to explain my wait-minimization gambit I thanked him and told him I’d use it next time. I once got stuck in the Priority Lane (or is it Premier Lane?) for an inordinate amount of time, while the normal lanes were moving apace.
The SQ lounge is past the other lounges, up one level from the gates. It’s an OK lounge, though nothing really to write home about. I guess I could have tried the Thai *G lounge too, but there was not much time and after a few slices of cake and a drink, I was on my way to the gate. The security check was quick, boarding followed within a few minutes, and as usual, SQ 111 was served by a 777 with the Raffles SpaceBeds in F. Not having had much sleep the previous night, I was sorely tempted to take a nap with the seat flat, but it was not to be. The meal service consisted of a choice of beef in pita bread, or a chicken dish if memory serves. I had the beef, which was actually not bad, and made for an excellent afternoon snack on the short flight to SIN.
About 15 minutes from SIN the pilot announced that there’d be some turbulence ahead, so the seatbelt sign went on. My tray had been cleared by this point, and I was dozing with the SpaceBed flat. The pilot certain wasn’t kidding; the turbulence we hit was the worst I’d ever experienced in a wide-body jet. People screamed as the plane dropped for a few seconds through the turbulent air. It disrupted my nap, but provided for fantastic entertainment.
The landing itself was pretty smooth, and after a short taxi we were back at the gate. The immigration officer was back to the usual Singapore friendly standard, and within a few minutes I was back in another cab on my way to the Ritz-Carlton.
SIN-AMS
Flight KL 838, 22:55 Mon 28 Mar 05, Seat 77A, WBC
The sad part of travel is that you have to go back home too. The Dutch climate is not exactly conducive to much rejoicing when the time comes to return, and after dinner at the hotel, I went out to the pool area and just lay down on a lounger and stared at the stars for half an hour. The wonderful, glorious warmth of the Singapore evening suffused me, and it was with great sadness and reluctance that I got up and went to get a cab.
At the airport I wistfully looked on as the cab drove past the right turn to Terminal 2, where the SQ flights depart from, and was dropped off at Terminal 1. I had used the online check-in to change my seat assignment from 1K to 77A. The experience of sitting downstairs hadn’t appealed to me too much, so I opted for the exit row on the upper deck. The slight forward view that is afforded in row 1 is nice to have, but not all that exciting either.
I was quickly provided with a boarding card and I headed through emigration, which in turn too was quick and efficient. After that there was a bit of a dilemma. The CIAS lounge KL uses is pretty awful, so rather than spend too much time there I strolled through some shops and went to sit by the pool under the warm Singapore sky for a bit longer.
I did go to the lounge for a while to get a drink, but it was a pretty sorry affair. Limited selection of drinks and food, and not much space either. Altogether a dreary and claustrophobic experience. I was not in the best of moods to begin with, as the departure from warm and sunny places back to cold and rainy Amsterdam always places a bit of a drain on my demeanor.
Time drew closer to departure, and reluctantly I dragged myself off to the gate. A long line was still present at the security check, and no sign of a priority line for business class or elite passengers. So I morosely shuffled to the tail end, and waited for my turn at the X-ray machines. Fortunately boarding commenced quickly after this, and I was the first to make it on the plane. I went up the stairs, and to my surprise, the carry-on bag still would not fit in the overhead bins. I could have sworn I had no such problems on BA’s 744’s, but now I am not longer sure. My bag had to be stowed in the closet.
At least the upper deck provides the nice storage bins next to the seats, so I took the most important items out of the bag and stowed them there. The cabin looked about half full, and 77B next to me was empty too. The breakfast menus were distributed once again, with the same options as on the way out. The sweet meal was different though, being some kind of crème brulee.
The flight attendants came by with the same garish amenity kit, and also told us that there would be no dinner menus distributed, as they said they were “completely wrong.” So we were offered a choice of beef or salmon. I took the salmon, but with a pretty big dinner already in me, I was sure I wasn’t going to need it. Nuts were provided, as was the wine. I had a Californian Cabernet Sauvignon of otherwise unknown provenance, and of the movie choices I settled on The Final Cut, with the ever-annoying Robin Williams.
I’ve entirely forgotten what the appetizer was. The salmon was better than I had expected, with a certain spicy tinge to it. Still, it wasn’t all that great and I wasn’t feeling hungry anyway. Dessert consisted solely of what were I think Leonidas chocolates from a box. No other choices, no cheese, no ice cream, no nothing. Looks like there was a major snafu in the catering for this flight. I suppose that perhaps I should complain, but if I complained about every KLM problem I encountered, I’d have very little time left for, oh, sleep, life, work and other piddling details.
Once the movie was over, I donned my Gleaming Silver eyeshades and went to sleep. I woke up while we were passing just over northern Afghanistan. I went to the lavatory, and on my way back, one of the flight attendants saw me. He came over and asked if I wanted anything eat or drink. A nice attentive touch. Back to sleep.
Breakfast was similar to the outbound flight, but this time was served over western Poland. The hot sweet dish I had was not very good, but the other items provided sufficient sustenance for me to survive a bit longer. I collected another Delft Blue house to add to the stash I have somewhere.
Inevitably, we landed on the dreaded Polderbaan. This is the runway that’s conveniently located in another city, making pilots do double duty as taxi drivers before and after landing. The distance from the Polderbaan to the terminal is about 8 km, or 5 miles. To put this into (Dutch) perspective, that’s a taxi in a plane that takes you east about 4% of the broadest width of the country. Do a take-off or landing 25 times from the Polderbaan, and you’ve driven across the width of the Netherlands in a plane. Check.
The weather was very Dutch indeed. 5 degrees C (40-ish F), gray, cold, drizzly, damp, dank, depressing. Ah, it’s great to be home. Before we even reached the gate, I started thinking about the next trip.
We finally arrived at the end of the F pier, so a bit of a walk ensued to immigration. As there were no lines, I just went through the old-fashioned way using my passport, as this is marginally faster than going the Privium iris scan given the circumstances. The bags were supposed to arrive on the same belt as the ones from an earlier flight from Houston. A slightly later flight from Lagos was also to disgorge its bags on the same belt. I was hoping to avoid that crush.
Being back in Amsterdam, any vestigial effects that Singaporean efficiency might have had on KLM operations had long since worn off. Priority tags on the bags meant truly nothing, as there seemed neither rhyme nor reason to the dispersion of the prioritized luggage. My bag came out five or six minutes after the first one, so it was not too bad I suppose. As usual coming from Singapore, I was hassled by the customs agents, but this time I survived without having my bags checked. Not that I had any contraband on me for a change; only the Borders store at Wheelock Place did some good additional business as a result of my visit.
Overall, my initial conclusion stands: I don’t see why people would want to pay thousands of euros for KL business class, when for the same price you can get SQ. Sometimes for less even. It boggles the mind, but then again, perhaps my mind is easily boggled.
Still, it was great to have been back in Singapore and KL, and I do hope to return there again soon!
PS: Stay reports for the Ritz-Carlton in Singapore and Mandarin Oriental in Kuala Lumpur will be forthcoming.