Arnur

Preflight:

Business would take me to East Africa for a two day meeting in the quaint town of Moshi in Northern Tanzania, about 40 km from Kilimanjaro International Airport. The only airline offering direct flights there from Europe is KL, which was handy as I am about 7.000 miles short of the 70.000 miles necessary to qualify again for FB Platinum Elite. As the trip would take place in the middle of the week and I was not very tempted to stay for the weekend to go on Safari or to visit Zanzibar, my employer (or rather our customer) was compelled to shell out for an outrageously expensive coach ticket. However, this allowed me to upgrade the outbound sector to business class (the return flight was already full in business when I made my reservation), which is fairly hard under the restrictive FB rules. KL's flights to Tanzania operate a triangular pattern from Amsterdam to KIA to Dar-es-Salam to Amsterdam, using an MD-11, a type had not flown for quite some while. It was also my first ever visit to Tanzania, so I was quite looking forward to this trip.

Europe to Kilimanjaro

The downside of traveling via KL to Africa is that the connecting flights from elsewhere in Europe to Amsterdam take off in the early morning hours. In my case, this means the 6.55am Cityhopper service from Cologne/Bonn airport (CGN). I had used OLCI the night before and it worked flawlessly, netting me seats 1A from CGN to Amsterdam and 6A for the onward flight to Kilimanjaro (JRO). The autobahn was quite empty this Wednesday morning and I arrived at Terminal 2 at about 6am. There was nobody waiting at the two check-in counters and I was checked in in less than two minutes, finally ending up checking a single piece of luggage after debating the risk of lost luggage versus having to carry it around in Amsterdam. Curiously, the agent printed paper boarding passes for me again, despite the fact that I had checked-in online. I went through security in less than five minutes and was at the lounge at about 6.15am. KL uses the airport business lounge, which offers a nice selection of drinks (and a more limited selection of 'snacks'), as well as a quiet and comfortable environment. Reading material in German and English (I did not check for other languages) was plentiful as well. The main drawback of this lounge are the opening hours, while it opens at 6am on weekdays (which is fine for me), it remains closed until 8am on weekends. Since I often travel on weekends, this means no lounge access for me on the morning KL service. This is particularly annoying as there is neither coffee nor any breakfast on the flights to Amsterdam (see below). I went to the (bus) gate at about 6.35am where boarding was already underway.

12 DEC 07 KL 1804 CGN-AMS dep 0655 arr 0815 F50 Seat 1A

All flights between Cologne and Amsterdam are operated by Cityhopper's F50 turboprops. While my boarding pass said 'business class', there is actually no service differentiation on those flights (not even a cabin divider). On this early morning flight we were offered the usual tiny orange juice drink in a plastic container and a cookie. During the course of the day, the cookie eventually gets substituted by pretzels. That's all. No coffee and no alternative soft drink (not to mention alcohol) are available. While this is, no doubt, explained with operational requirements by the airline (the actual flying time is usually less than one hour), there are two flight attendants on board which would certainly be sufficient to provide a more complete on-board service. Other than this route, I rarely fly on regional services in Europe these days, but on my last Lufthansa Regional service they managed to serve a nice (cold) breakfast in business class on a plane of a similar size on an equally short sector. Obviously, most passengers using the Cityhopper service are connecting to other flights in Amsterdam, but still I always feel a bit cheated.. The one redeeming feature is the fact that Cityhopper carries a nice selection of newspapers, so while one does not get fed, at least the mind is occupied by the Herald Tribune.

Arrival in Amsterdam was on-time and after clearing a fairly-shoer immigration line, I walked to the Crown Lounge in the non-Schengen section. Unlike it's counterpart in Cologne, this lounge was anything but empty and quiet, and it was also very short on newspapers. Sitting space was at a premium and it took some effort to locate an empty table in a remote corner. KL really needs to invest some money into its lounges at the Amsterdam hub. While a major facelift has been announced for late 2008, I also feel that it is falling behind its competitors (LH, BA) in the food department. Anyway, I found some coffee and orange juice and entertained myself with the newspaper until it was time to board.

12 DEC 07 KL 569 AMS - JRO dep 1020 arr 2045 MD11 Seat 6A

After walking to the gate, I noticed that the usual premium passenger line was absent this morning. This was probably due to the low number of passengers and so I waited patiently for the second security check in a line of about 20 people. However, the line moved reasonably quickly and I found my seat in the second, smaller business class section immediately after the 2L door. The MD11 fleet is equipped with the old WBC seat and has no AVOD, so I was looking forward towards a business class experience right out of the early 1990s. Nevertheless, I found it quite pleasant.

While not attempt was made to hang my coat, I was offered a pre-departure drink (champagne, water or orange juice). The load was very light up front, I counted 5 passengers in my section of the cabin and maybe another six to eight in the front section. I'm not certain about coach but the load certainly was certainly less than 2/3, which is surprisingly low for East African destinations which often run near capacity. The seat, while mechanical and less than fully flat, was comfortable enough for me and with nobody sitting next to me space was certainly more than adequate. The in-flight entertainment system was a letdown by comparison, it offered some twelve movie channels, with the movies running in cycles. While the screen size and the headset were premium-grade, KL offers a better selection of films in coach on the A330 and B777 fleet. However, I understand that the MD11 fleet will also be equipped with the AVOD system fairly soon. I ended up watching Bordertown and Hair Spray, which I found mildly entertaining.

Appetiser

Thinly sliced loin of veal
Accompanied by mango, tomato and creamy guacamole

Main courses

Seafood casserole
Tilapia in rich mousseline sauce with fennel compote and carrot confit with tarragon

or

Stew of pheasant thigh, mushrooms and black olives
Served with curry, cabbage and raisins, mashed potatoes with apple, nuts and vegetables.
To complement this meal we highly recommend the Casa Silva Carmenère Gran Reserva 2005.

or

Pastrami of Friander young beef
With wasabi beurre blanc, creamy rice with herbs, sweet and sour celery and Brussels endive tartlet.

Dessert

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

Wine List

Champagne
Charles Heidsieck Brut Réserve

KLM's Special Wine
Mmmmm 2004/2005 Monstrell de Castano
Yecla, Spain

White Wine
Müller-Thurgau 2006, Apostelhoeve
Maastricht, Netherlands

Chardonnay 2007, Groote Post
Darling, South Africa

Dessert Wine
Chateau de la Peyrade
Muscat de Frontignan

Red Wine
Carmenère Gran Reserva 2005
Casa Silva, Chile

Cabernet Sauvignon 2006, Beaux Lieux
Vin de Pays d'Oc, France

Port
Taylor's 2000
Late Bottled Vintage Port

The meals were created by Dutch chef Pascal Jalhaji of Vermeer restaurant in Amsterdam. There have been some fairly negative reports about WBC meals in the KL forum recently, so I was not certain what to expect. However, I was quite positively surprised about the food. It would have been nice to have a selection of appetizers to choose from but the veal was nice. For the main course I had the pastrami, which was well prepared and tasty, if somewhat rich. I stayed with the South African Chardonnay throughout the meal and found it enjoyable. I don't quite recall the dessert, but I think it I had a cake of some sort. The service was extremely attentive, no doubt helped by the light load, and my glass never remained empty for long.

A water bottle was placed on my seat after the meal. About two hours after the meal, a snack service was offered by the flight attendants. There were numerous items available ranging from ice cream, to wraps and very nice Satay skewers. I was about to decline, but the attendant insisted that I should try the Satay and she was right. There was also a small buffet with snacks and drinks in the galley, but service at my seat was so attentive that there was little need to partake. At some stage the purser also stopped by my seat to ask whether everything was alright, addressing me by name and thanking me for my business, a nice gesture in my view. About ninety minutes before arrival in Kilimanjaro, we were offered a second meal, billed as a “hot snack”.

Appetiser
Indonesian vegetable pastry
With sweet and sour salad

Hot snacks
Spicy Indonesian noodles
With a carrot and bean sprout sauté, cabbage and green beans stewed in coconut mikk

or

Beef Rendang
Beef stewed in spices and coconut milk served with green beans, cabbage with carrot julienne and aromatic rice

I like the Indonesian-inspired meals on KL (which also appear occassionally in coach class), not least because Western meals are often fairly bland. I was, however, surprised that both options were Indonesian. While the pastry was a bit dry, the noodles were very flavorful and, next to the Satay, probably the best part of the meal service on this flight. Service was again very attentive, but seemed a bit rushed. For example, I received my main course before I was done with my starter.

Arrival at JRO was about 40 minutes late as we had already departed with some delay (waiting for connecting passengers and their bags). Kilimanjaro International Airport is a fairly modern, if underutilized, facility. Other than KL, it is served by Tanzanian operators Precisionair (a code-share partner of Kenya Airways) and Air Tanzania, as well as by a few more obscure operators such as Rwandair Express. At the time of our arrival, the only other plane on the tarmac was a B737 of Air Tanzania which I had just arrived from Dar-es-Salam. The flight attendants made sure that the business class passengers were allowed to disembark first and soon I was walking down the stairs into the warm African night. It seems that about 100 people, mostly Western tourist got off in JRO, while the rest continued to Dar-es-Salam about forty minutes later. While it seems to be possible to get a visa on arrival, I had already gotten mine from the embassy in Berlin and so I was among the first people to pass through immigration and to the baggage hall. There I waited for some ten minutes for my bag, cleared customs (a breeze) and met up with my taxi driver for the 40 minute drive to Moshi.

Arnur

Moshi
I spent two pleasant days in Moshi, a quaint, mid-size town some 40 km away from the airport. Later I learned that the meeting should have taken place in Arusha, Moshi's better known neighbor and East African tourist hub, some 80 km away, but that some major convention meant that all of the city's accommodation had been booked solid. We stayed at the Leopard Hotel, a small town in downtown. While it offered clean rooms, satellite tv, dependable electricity and friendly service, it lacked some of the creature comforts associated with more upscale African hotels, such as a garden and a swimming pool. The food was also fairly uninspiring. Nevertheless, at about 56 US$ per night (including full board), it was quite ok and certainly beats the tented camps (at 100 US$ per night), I'm used to from Sudan. The workshop ended early and I had some time to explore the town. There was nothing to see in terms of sights, but the location near Mount Kilimanjaro was certainly spectacular and the town itself was green and fairly tidy. While there were a few tourists around, there were no touts or self-appointed guides. Other than a relatively well-organized bus station, there were also few tourist-related services. I stopped for a latte in the Tanzanian variety of Starbucks and amused myself by reading the newspapers, which featured a story of some 1.000 Tanzanian pilgrims getting stuck for days at Dar-es-Salam airport after the national carrier had failed to procure the necessary paperwork for a chartered DC10 to take them to Saudi Arabia.

Kilimanjaro to Europe

With no internet access, I was unable to use OLCI and therefore made an effort to be at the airport two hours before scheduled departure time. While I had been impressed by the smooth arrival procedures, departures was quite a bit more complicated. Even though the airport was again fairly empty (in addition to KL, the only other flight that evening was a domestic service by Air Tanzania), there was a long line outside of the first security-checkpoint (which was before check-in, fairly common in Africa). After clearing security, I waited in a long line of KL passengers, while a Swissport employee tried to marshall us to the four open counters (one of which was dedicated to premium passengers). Even though check-in at JRO was computerized, it still took a surprisingly long time to process each passengers, many of which carried outsized souveniers. From the frantic activity at the supervisor's desk it was clear that the plane was overbooked and I offered to volunteer for a bump, but was told that Swissport was unable to handle compensation at JRO. What a pity, I would certainly not have minded another night in Tanzania and a return flight next morning through Nairobi.

About 30 minutes after my arrival at the airport, I was in the Tanzanite Lounge, a shared facility used by KL for its premium passengers. There were maybe some other 10-15 people in the lounge, all waiting for the KL service. Like most African lounges, the main advantage was comfortable and uncrowded seating. Drinks were available from a staffed bar and large tv screen provided some entertainment for those so inclined. I did not see any newspapers and I doubt, even though I did not check, whether internet access would have been available. However, there was a decent selection of hot snacks (samosas, spring rolls, sandwitches) and I helped myself to dinner, reasoning that it would be a long while into the flight until KL would provide any meals. The MD11 from Amsterdam arrived at 2130, some 45 minutes late and I made my way down and through a second security check to the gate area. I guess that about 150 passengers were waiting for our flight, consisting of the usual mix of Western tourists, expatriates going home for the holidays and the odd African travelling to Europe. The crowd also included some 20 college kids from the USA, returning from some Christian exchange program, an increasingly common sight across Africa. Having received color-coded plastic boarding cards, we boarded we big plane through two sets of stairs and I settled into my coach class seat for the long flight home.

14 DEC 07 KL 569 JRO-AMS dep 2140 arr 0715 MD11 Seat 31F

We quickly took off for the short flight to Dar-es-Salam, the service consisted of the same tiny plastic container with orange juice I'm used to from my Cityhopper flights. No newspapers were offered, which I found annoying even though it is quite common on departures from the African stations.

I also noted that the reading light was not working on my seat and alerted a flight attendant about this problem. As the flight was completely full, there was not a lot she could do about it though. Later, after departing from Dar-es-Salam, the purser informed us that this problem affected a number of seats in my section and that it would have delayed the flight for several hours in Amsterdam if they had tried to fix it before departure. The crew also provided a 50 Euro travel discount voucher and another voucher good for 2.000 FB miles as compensation. All things considered, I thought this was fair and while I would have preferred an operational light, the crew still handled the matter very professionally.

After some 40 minutes flying time we arrived in Dar-es-Salam, where the crew and a large number of passengers from Amsterdam disembarked. The planed was cleaned and refuelled, unfortunately the transit passengers were not allowed to get off. I was very dark outside, so I saw very little of the airport and the city. We took off at about midnight with a full load of passengers. Shortly after departure, the flight attendants served a hot snack, consisting of a vegetables soup and a small salad. The 'soup snack' has recently appeared in the KL menu and has been the topic of some discussion in the KL forum. Generally, I quite like the idea of having soup in coach, but the salad was forgettable and the whole 'meal' not very substantial. I was glad that I had eaten in the lounge at JRO, otherwise it would have left me hungry.

On the main screen the movie was Rattatoulie, but I managed to fall asleep soon after the end of the meal service. When I woke up some ninety minutes out of Amsterdam, the cabin crew was preparing the breakfast service. This time, there was a choice of Omlette or French Toast, along with the usual bread rolls and some fruit. Unlike last night's snack, I though this meal was above average for coach class. We arrived in Amsterdam almost on schedule and I walked to immigration and through the security check to the KL Schengen lounge. Unlike it's intercontinental counterpart, this lounge was fairly empty in the morning and after less than 5 minutes wait a shower became available. After two cups of cappucino, several glasses of orange juice and a croissant, I was ready to take my commuter flight home.

15 DEC 07 KL 1807 AMS-CGN dep 0915 arr 1025 F50 Seat 6A

This flight was utterly uneventful. Same service as on the out-bound sector (orange juice and a cookie). The load was again very good, as very few network carriers are serving CGN, KL must be making quite some money on this route. I just wish they would improve the service on board. However, the flight was on-time and they provided today's Herald Tribune. With very good weather, it was an enjoyable flight and for some time we were able to watch another of KL's F50 on it's path to Düsseldorf airport. Baggage delivery was very quick in Cologne and soon I was out of the airport and on my way home.

Conclusion

All things considered, this was a good trip. I liked KL's business class product, even though the inflight-entertainment certainly needs an update. The service on the outbound sector was very friendly and personal, the food above average for business class. The return flight was ok. The snack was a bit of a let-down, but the breakfast made up for it. The seat, while cramped, was still sufficiently comfortable for me to sleep some five hours. Amsterdam was again an excellent airport to transit at, fairly short lines and a minimum of hassle. My main beef with KL is the bad service on the commuter flight to and from Amsterdam, and the crowded intercontinental lounges at their hub

Sjoerd

Thanks for the nice report, Arnur. Kilimanjaro is on my list of places to go, perhaps I'll burn some miles to go there in 2008. Happy New Year!

TrayflowInUK

I know a lot of us rant about KL's business class service, but I've rarely had a bad experience. Thanks for sharing your trip report! JRO is a destination I'd love to hit, especially before the snows disappear forever .

camsean

Thanks for an interesting trip report.

Arnur

That's definitively a consideration, I only got a glimpse of Mount Kilimanjaro from Moshi (most of the time the peak was covered in clouds), but I was shocked about how little snow was visible on the top.