Hi Dear Forum Members,
Sorry if my questions has been mentioned in this forum before but I did searched with no result returned...
I'm planning a ride on MD-11 as I never fly it before. Heard rumors that they will start phasing it out since 2014 so I selected a shortest route it's flying now: the AMS-IKA return.
I'm planning an outbound to IKA on Sat evening and inbound on Sun morning...
Yes... I'm planning to take KL433 out and fly back on the very same aircraft after landed at IKA only 2 hours...
So may I ask if anybody have practiced something similar like this?
I know maybe nobody did this before at IKA, but I did find a lot people flying the inaugural flights, maiden flight, etc. What are they going to do after landing? Simply go to transfer and then board return flight? Where are they getting their return boarding pass? Possible to request it from a manned counter at the departure point, say AMS?
Secondly I'm a bit worrying about equipment issues, in that I'm flying return flights on same A/C and in case of change of equipment I lose both legs of MD-11... I kept looking at flight24 regularly:
http://data.flight24.com/flights/kl433/
and found during latter half of July, twice the equipment were changed: 19JUL to A332 and 30JUL to B744.
How is the dispatch reliability of their MD-11 nowadays? Why equipment were changed? It's because of a maintenance problem or overbooking? Because KL433 departs AMS in afternoon so I presume KLM may have a vacant MD if there is mechanical failure?
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One question besides,
I'm in France but I book this two days trip on KLM UK as they offered a two day return only £670! Which I could never get in continental europe! Why only KLM UK has "best price guarantee" and why KLM impose 7 days min stay on its discounted rate across continental Europe? Is it because of some legal issues in UK that make UK market a little special?
I fly TLS-AMS-MAN-AMS-IKA-AMS-MAN-AMS-TLS instead of TLS-AMS-IKA-AMS-TLS because the first itinerary is 400EUR cheaper than latter! Weird...
Cheers! Happy flying!