bostonbali

This trip was conceived last fall (2006). I had earned two Hilton Free Night Certificates (Q3FN) good for any Hilton family property worldwide. My GF and I looked on Hilton's website, trying to find the most exotic Hilton destination we could otherwise never afford visiting. We finally settled on the Hilton Seychelles Northolme Resort & Spa, after we realized we could not get to our 1st choice property, the Hilton Maldives, easily or cheaply.

I booked four nights at this hotel using my certs (I eventually earned three certs), and points (40K for one night). To get there, I redeemed 240,000 NWA miles for two Business Class tickets. Choosing C class was really a no-brainer, since US-Africa tix cost 90,000 in coach (so C would only be a 30K premium roundtrip!) I ended up tweaking our reservation at least 5 times to get the optimal flights, each time utilizing my Platinum status to make fee-free changes. Unfortunately, since this was a paper ticket (Kenya Airways does not have an e-ticket agreement with NWA), I had to either send in my tickets to NWA's customer service center in Chisholm, or go to the airport counter to get them reissued (which was always a 1.5-2 hour affair). Taxes were only $180 or so per person. Not too bad for a ticket wthat would have cost $15-18K!!!

6/29/07
Finally, the big day has arrived. My GF and I took public transport to JFK (a funny way to start a top-notch trip, but hey, we're both a bit frugal). We were running late, and arrived at the CO ticket counter only 7 minutes before check in closed. We had a moment or two to stop by the NWA lounge, which is one of my favorite lounges in the NWA system. While at the lounge, I noticed a CO plane parked out on the tarmac, a few hundred yards away from the terminal. I wondered to myself whether that was our plane that had not yet been brought to our gate, or another CO plane waiting for a flight later on that day. We walked through a mostly-empty Term 4 to an empty security area and to our gate.

Once at our gate, B23, I became concerned for a second when I didn't see anybody. I then noticed the small sign directing pax to head downstairs in order to reach our flight. We took the escalator downstairs, only to find a BUS GATE. How strange, especially for JFK. Is this all CO flights are handled at JFK?
Anyhow, the procedure at the gate was a bit strange. The agent let FC and Elites board the bus first. When the bus let us our near the plane, another agent who was waiting at the bottom of the stairs would only left FC and people in the back of the plane go up the stairs. As a result, you had plenty of people waiting around the stairs impatiently, while the FC pax who boarded the bus first had to push their way through to get to the stairs.

JFK-IAH
CO820 B737-500
Scheduled Departure: 1:29PM
Scheduled Arrival: 4:21PM

This is a routine flight, so I won't go into too much detail. The flight was mostly uneventful. Since the flight falls outside of the normal 'meals at mealtime' window, we only received a snack, which was a cold plate consisting of 3 shrimp, 2 salamis and a bit of cheese. The plane appeared full, and all 8 FC seats were taken. There was no IFE on this (or any other CO 735) flight. We arrived at the south concourse of Terminal C right on time.

IAH Layover
We walked over to CO's flagship PC, at Terminal E. Unfortunately, the lounge was a zoo – much more active than during my previous visits there. Must be all the evening flights to Europe and South America. After seeing Peter Max parked at a nearby gate, I decided to walk up the skybridge to Terminal D, and visit the KLM lounge in order to get our seat assignment corrected (when we received our boarding passes at JFK, I noticed that we no longer had the seats I reserved for us months ago). Somehow KLM managed to change our seats from 2AC to 8C and 9C. I protested, and before the flight, the lounge agent gave me boarding passes for 2AC, stating that she kicked the guy in 2A out of his seat to give us back the seats we booked (why does KLM always mess with your seat assignment???) Since the KLM lounge is not that exciting (actually, it's quite depressing), we wondered next door to the AF lounge, which is at the very end of the D terminal (by gate D12). What a great hideaway! This place was totally empty (we were there for 1.5 hours, and there were only 2-3 other people in there the whole time). The lounge had the new AF modern furniture (that leather smells great!), 2 Apple desktops (no free wifi) and plenty of free booze.

IAH-AMS
KL664, operated by a PrivatAir BBJ
Scheduled Departure: 7:45PM
Scheduled Arrival: 12:25PM

The moment I've been waiting for the past 8 months has finally come. We assembled in the gate area (D5), waiting to board our plane. There were about 30 of us at the gate at that point. A guy walked up to the gate agent, looked around and said – pretty light flight, eh? The agent looked up and said 'actually, it's quite full. There are only 40 seats on this plane'. The guy looked at him, as if not initially understanding him. When he finally got it, a smile formed on his face.

Before boarding, I asked the KLM Lounge agent whether I could take a picture of the cabin before everybody piles in. The agent stated she'd call the gate agent and make the request. When I got to the gate, the agent told me that while he can't let me on before boarding starts, he would ensure we're the first ones in. Great. A flight attendant heard the request, and walked over to grab our camera, so that she could take the pictures for us before boarding began. Even better!
The experience when you get on the plane is hard to describe (here is a picture of the cabin when you walk in) You immediately see the huge amount of room row 1 has (at least 2 meters!), then see your seat (assuming you're in row 2, as we were), and immediately begin to smile. The seat and seat controls were simple but smart, there was plenty of legroom in front of it, and countless cubbyholes/pockets for storage in front of you (in the seatback of the row in front of you, so that's where row 1 had a distinct disadvantage).

Once the flight was underway and IAH was but a distant memory, they began by passing out mixed nuts, and began setting up the DigiPlayers. The
Flight attendants were complaining that they've been having problems with the DigiPlayers on the way in. True to their words, it took about 3 or 4 different combinations of DiGiPlayers and electrical cables to get a working set. Other than that, I didn't find this system TOO cumbersome. True, I probably wouldn't drop my build-in NWA
AVOD system on the floor, the way I dropped this DigiPlayer unit a couple of times while eating dinner (the DigEplayer and the food share the same in-seat tray). Otherwsise, the system was not too bad.

Cocktail/drink service was done through a beverage cart rolling down the plane. The meal was decent (nothing special) aside from the appetizer, which was truly amazing! Here is the menu:

Appetizer
Butterfly Shrimp
Served with lobster salad and lemon

Main Courses
Beef Tenderloin with a horseradish crust
Accompanied by stuffed sourgettes and farmhouse-roasted corn and bacon

or

Chicken filled with mushroom au gratin
Accompanied by lemon orzo rice and broccoli in an herb glaze

or

Halibut fillet with Malaysian lime sauce
Served with asparagus and basmati rice with mango and raisins

Dessert
We invite you to select your choice of tart, cheese or fresh fruit from our dessert trolley.

In between service
For your comfort, bottles of mineral water will be distributed after your meal

Sky Break
You are also most welcome to visit our galley during your flight where a selection of snacks and drinks will be available

Breakfast
To select breakfast, we were given a menu that we filled out during dinner, which was then collected by the flight attendants.
We chose the Savory dish breakfast, which consisted of Scrambled eggs served with peppered bacon and cheese sauce, Texas toast and shredded Swiss cheese.
The other option was a Sweet dish, which consisted of a French toast with raspberry sugar and flame-roasted apples.

The Swiss staff was very friendly and accommodating. There were 4 of them helping 40 of us. Someone on FT made a comment before stating that the plane is much louder in the back than towards the front. I fully agree, the back is definitely much louder than the front – I recommend sitting ahead of the exit row (row 5 or 6, I believe).
About an hour prior to landing, we received our KLM miniature huisjes. We arrived 20 minutes early into AMS.

AMS Layover

We had a long layover in AMS (from 12PM until 9PM), so after a quick shower at the KLM lounge, we put our stuff in two lockers (paying 5Euro per locker), and headed out. We spent the afternoon in Haarlem, which is about a 40 minute bus ride from Schiphol (roundtrip cost was about 6.50E by using a Strippenkart). While in Haarlem, we visited the Corrine De Boom museum (a house where Corrine De Boom hid six Jews and Dutch army deserters during WWII. The Gestapo was tipped off, raided the house, did not find the secret hideaway (or its inhabitants), but took away Corrine's family because they found a suspicious number of food rations in the house). Corrine survived to write a book about her story, but four of her family members died in concentration camps). We spent the rest of the afternoon walking around this lovely town, visiting the market in the town square, the windmill not far from the center of town, as well as the beautiful canals. Eventually it was time to head back to the airport and take our Kenya Airways flight to Nairobi.

bostonbali

AMS-NBO,
KQ117, B777-200
Scheduled Departure: 9:05PM
Scheduled Arrival: 6:35AM
Actual Arrival: 9:20AM

We got back to the airport with plenty of time to relax at the lounge (there was no line at security at this time of the day. We got to see the KQ plane arrive at its gate, then line up next to its KLM cousins. My first impression upon boarding this aircraft and making the EBLT (Ego-boosting Left Turn) was 'WOW!' The Premier World business class cabin in this 772 was quite spacious (there were four rows laid out in a 2-3-2 arrangement). The purple-fabric seats were quite wide and comfortable with 76" pitch. The IFE screen was mounted in front of the seat (part of the hard shell of the seat in front). The seat only had four control buttons (two for the seatback, two for the leg rest), however it was a FULLY-FLAT seat, which was the most important part for us. This was our first experience on a fully-flat seat – what a great feeling. No sliding downward meant a peaceful sleep! In case anybody is interested, I also took a pic of the Y bulkhead seats.

Amenity packs were already waiting for us in our seats. Menus and welcome drinks (water, champagne, OJ, apple juice) were distributed by the purser, who would also be attending to our side (we were seated in 2A and 2B). We took off a few minutes late, but were happy to be off the ground, on our way to a continent we've not been to before!

While we were climbing, our ears kept popping, which was a bit unusual. About a ½ hour after taking off, I noticed that we began circling back towards land (we were over water at that point). The pilot then announced we had to return to AMS to take care of a problem (at that point, he didn't disclose what the problem was). Sure enough, we descended to about 7,000ft, and proceeded to dump fuel out the wings over the North Sea before landing about one hour after takeoff. I'm sure dumping fuel from a full 777 was not a small expense to Kenya Airways (does anybody have a rough idea of the cost of dumping all that fuel?) Once on the ground, the mechanics took about 30 minutes to correct the problem, and another hour or so to refuel the plane and get our paperwork in order. During that entire time, we received minimal info from the crew. We figured out the problem had to do with the pressurization system, because the mechanics closed and opened the doors a few times while trying to pressurize the cabin (our ears would pop each time they would do this).

By the time everything was fixed, we were quite nervous, because we were only scheduled to have a 2.5 hour layover in Nairobi before our flight to Seychelles, which only flies every four days (and we were only going to the Seychelles for four days!). We were now running about 3 hours later, which means we would most certainly miss our flight to the Seychelles. The crew had no idea whether the flight to the Seychelles would wait for us. The ground crew was not interested in letting us off the plane in AMS so that we could find alternate routes to the Seychelles (despite the fact that we only had carry on luggage and no bags in the cargo hold area). I turned on my laptop, purchased 30 minutes worth of wireless (6 Euro), but the moment I signed on, we were being pushed back and I had to shut down my laptop. Ultimately, we stayed onboard, knowing that we'd arrive in Nairobi about 30 minutes after our flight to the Seychelles was scheduled to take off, and hoped for the best.

Once in the air (a second time), service was good, though not exceptional. It began with a hot towel service, then cocktails served from a rolling cart. We were given a bag of prepackaged nuts (not much different than one would receive in the NWA Domestic FC cabin, with the exception that the bag of nuts said 'Out of Africa' on it). We then moved on to the canapé. Afterwards, we received a tray containing our chosen appetizer and dessert. The main dish was presented after the appetizer plate was taken away. The food was a bit disappointing, both in terms of choice, as well as taste. The plateware, however, was very attractive. The crew was good, though not extremely personable. The flight was 25% empty in business class, with 7 seats remaining open. IIRC, flight time was about 8 hours.
One comment about the menus. KQ has dedicated menus for each long-haul flights. The header of our menu said Amsterdam-Nairobi, KQ 117. On the way back, our menu said Nairobi-Paris, KQ112. I've never seen that before (usually, I see a small code at the bottom or the back of the menu explaining which routes it's used for, and the same menu is usually used for various routes).

Appetizer
Fennel Olive Salad with Smoked Halibut, Smoked Dried Beef, Pomedori Tomatoes, Mixed Herbs Garnish

Or

Carrot and Fennel Salad with Cucumber, Walnuts, Lollo Bianco, Oak Leaf Salad and Reypenaar Cheese Shavings

Main Course
Blanquette of Chicken served with Cooked Baby Potatoes, French Beans, Parisian Carrots and Snow Peas

Or

Grilled Salmon with Teriyaki Sauce served with Tricolore Rice and Carrots

Or

Pasta Di Semola Grano with Oven dried Tomatoes and Parmesan Cheese

Dessert
Passion Fruit Profiterol Tart with Whipped Cream

NBO Layover

We landed in NBO and got to see some cool local airliners, such as Delta Connection (I don't think this one services LGA, BOS or DCA…), as well as Tanzania's PrecisionAir and a sea of pretty KQ tails. Before we disembarked, we were told that our flight to SEZ was, in fact, waiting for us. Turns out that flight was delayed anyhow, not really waiting for us, but that's OK, we were extremely happy and relieved to hear that. All we had to do was find our gate. Shouldn't be too hard at an airport with only 14 gates, right? Hmm. We ran into two problems. Not only are not all the gates marked (at least the one to the Seychelles was unmarked), but we also received different gate info from the various KQ agents we asked. We eventually found our gate (where after handing our boarding passes, we walked onto the tarmac and climbed the stairs to our plane). There were a total of about 10 people connecting from the AMS flight to the SEZ flight, all of whom made their connection (not sure about their luggage though).

NBO-SEZ
KQ450, B737-700
Schedule Time: 9:00AM
Actual Departure: 10:00AM (or so)
Scheduled Arrival: 1:30PM
Actual Arrival: 2:15PM (or so)

The flight took about 2:50. We were given a welcome drink (OJ, Apple Juice, Champagne or Water), warm towels, mixed nuts (prepackaged, not in a bowl), a menu, and a warm brunch. The website says that the seats have about a 40" pitch, but I found them a bit tight (just as tight as domestic NW FC seats). Every one of the 16 seats in Business was taken. Coach appeared to be about 90% full.

Here is a recap of the menu. Not that this one did NOT have our flight number or route, unlike the longhaul menu (otherwise, it had the same look to it, and actually offered an additional white wine and an additional red wine over the longhaul menus).

Brunch
Freshly Prepared Fruit Salad

Assorted Cereals

Tropical Fruit Yoghurt

Baked Egg and Tomato Strudel; Grilled Chicken Sausage; Mexican Style Beans; Sauteed Mushrooms; Grilled Tomato

Or

Beef Brochette Provencale served with Biriyani Rice

Or

Kenyan Vegetable Compote with Cheese Potato Croquette

Assorted Bread Rolls and Croissant

Butter and Preserve

Kenya Tea or Coffee

Upon arrival in SEZ, we walked down the stairs to the tarmac, then into the arrival hall, where we had to present our Yellow Fever shots. We couldn't find our yellow fever cards immediately, but presented the Health Ministry Agent a copy of our immunizations, which sufficed. We then proceeded to immigration, where we had to show our return flight tickets (to prove we did not intend on staying in paradise forever). We then entered the island of Mahe. We decided to take the public bus, which costs $0.30. We were definitely the only foreigners on the bus, but it was a fun (yet hot) ride. It was kind of ironic arriving at a $1,200 a night resort on a $0.30 bus, but we didn't care – we finally made it.

bostonbali

Reserved for KQ SEZ-NBO-CDG

bostonbali

Reserved for CO CDG-EWR

SAT Lawyer

I, too, was in the Terminal E PC the evening of June 29. Quite a wet day. My flight was delayed by two hours.

Thanks for the trip report. I've always wanted to take the PrivatAir flight and the pictures are very helpful. How was the seat for sleeping purposes?

The Seychelles are on my must-see tropical island paradise list. Got the Maldives out of the way this year and the wife and I honeymooned in French Polynesia so I guess the Seychelles are next up.

bostonbali

Hmm, I don't recall the rain, but then again, we were pretty excited about our trip and were probably oblivious to many things around us...

The sleeping arrangement on the PrivatAir was actually pretty comfortable. As many have stated before, the seats do go totally flat, but they also go down pretty low to the ground. Some people might mind being so low to the ground, we didn't really care. Here is a photo of the seat in its flat position, though it's not a very good picture.
Others have also complained about the bathrooms being small. I did not find them any smaller than normal 737-sized bathrooms. While the front bathroom is a bit tight (due to the curvature of the plane), I did not find the bathrooms near the rear galley too small.

The Seychelles were amazing. Wait till you see some of the pics we took of the Hilton!

travelexpert

Thanks for the great flight report, BostonBali. From what you describe in terms of making recurring changes to your ticketing, I now know that as an NWA NON-elite, I must not even attempt biz class tickets for my family of five!! I'll have to consider some other airline strategy for use of my frequent flyer miles....

I had ticketed in BA biz class for all of us to the Seychelles in summer of 2004. Then six weeks before our departure, BA called to say that it was cancelling its service to the Seychelles, and left us "high and dry".

AJO

wow! brilliant report so far, looking forward to the next parts! ^^

great to see you visited Haarlem; not as touristy as Amsterdam, but at least as nice as our capital.

one small correction: the name of Haarlem's most famous inhabitant was Corrie ten Boom.

I couldn't help but peek at the photos of the AMS-NBO-...-EWR segments, those look excellent too. Must have been a superb trip! (and I'm already interested as to why the AMS-NBO flight initially became an AMS-AMS flight)

bostonbali

Shhh, don't let the surprise out just yet...
I do plan on adding a few more pics to that album - inlcluding some Hilton Seychelles pics. There will be more to come!

aSiAnRiCk

Nice report so far .. can't wait to hear the rest! ^

Bretteee

Great report. I have reservations about flying on Kenya Airways after 2 recent crashes.

bostonbali

Two recent crashes? I was aware of one in April or May, when their 738 went down. What was the other crash? I wouldn't say my trip with KQ was maintenance-problem free, as you'll soon hear, but that actually made me feel that this airline takes safety very seriously.

Rejuvenated

Great report & photos! ^

Arnur

Delta Connection is a small Kenyan airline, which has traditionally served a number of destinations in Southern Sudan (Yei, Rumbek and Juba) using small turboprop equipment out of Nairobi's Wilson airport. Earlier this year, they acquired a B737 to fly from NBO to Juba, in response to growing demand.

Arnur

Two recent crashes, indeed. On 5 May 2007 in Southern Cameroon and on 30 January 2000 off the coast of Ivory Coast. However, despite those crashes I think that KQ's safety record is still fairly decent by African standards.