The captain was absolutely on the nose with his timings, the instruction to arm the doors came at 21:10 and we were pushing back immediately thereafter. The safety demonstration started straight away and threw me as it always does when there is no life jacket bit. And then the promised short taxi and off the ground at 21:20

Drinks and a bag of the delicious cheese puffs were offered as soon as the seatbelt light was off and I decided to roll with the wine for the first part of the flight. I find the Pinot Grigio perfectly potable.




A little later the wanderbox arrived and it was the falafel again so I basically extracted the Macarons for later and the rest went back. More wine accompanied the box, just to keep me hydrated, you understand






I think I have captured this before but I’m not 100% sure. This is why the KLM boxed meal is known as a wanderbox




Having enjoyed my wine it was time to switch to a coffee and a whisky or two to take me through to landing. All chilled out and settled for the remainder of my trip, imagine my surprise when the captain appeared in the cabin and has spent the last twenty minutes having a chat, that’s another first, I like how this guy rolls!

With about a half an hour to go I wandered into the galley to get a coffee and a baileys or two to see me through to landing and I ended up having a fabulous chat with the younger crew member who was fairly new to KLM. She was telling me that it had always been an ambition to be KLM crew as her parents had been. An ex beautician who’d changed careers because she just wanted to fly and a lovely young lady who is clearly loving her job.

Not long after we had the Pilots announcement at 23:20 that we were twenty minutes from landing, would be landing exactly on time, and that the current temperature in Bucharest was -10 Celsius!! Brrrrrrr!

Landing was on time and the captain managed to hit every single light in the runway! THUMP, THUMP, THUMP, the entire way along the runway. Once we pulled up at the gate the pursers announcement of “ladies and gentlemen, as you may have noticed, we have now arrived at Bucharest” had me in stitches

Great crew, I need to find out if KLM have some sort of recognition scheme similar to BAs golden tickets.

Walking the entire length of the airport I emerged at the leading edge of departures and immediately had a coughing fit due to how cold and dry it is! -10 is not fun!

I’ve just arrived at the hotel at 01:10 and it is straight to bed and, maybe, 6 hours sleep before I need to head out to my appointment

See you in the morning