This seems to vary, for no apparent reason. In the early days it worked just fine, on short haul flights I would invariably find that I had been pre-assigned a window seat in the first row in economy. Later this changed to an aisle seat, but still in the first row or two. From the beginning of this year, my chances of having a seat pre-assigned in the select seating zone have been about even at best.

I had an interesting experience today. When I checked in online yesterday, I discovered that I had been assigned a seat outside the Select Seating zone. I had no trouble changing this to an aisle seat in row 5, the first behind the cabin divider. Indeed, the entire Select Seating zone was wide open. I could not print my boarding card however, as this is not allowed for departures from CPH, allegedly for security reasons.

KLM has self-service check-in machines at CPH, but these do not accept FB cards as identification (why should they? FB has only been up and running for four months!). They do still accept FD cards, which I no longer carry but probably should, and passports about half the time. On this occasion I managed to convince the machine to acknowledge my passport, only to be told there was a problem with my reservation. I turned around and walked over to the combined KL/AF ticket office. There was one agent at the desk, so I joined the queue. A waiting passenger promptly informed me that this queue was only for AF, if I had a KL problem I should form my own queue and wait for a KL agent to appear. So much for seamless integration! I went to one of the check-in desks instead, where I was told that my seat assignment had been changed from 5C to 6C, a major development which the self-service machine apparently couldn't handle. I surmised that the reason for the change was that Europe Select had been expanded by one row, which the agent confirmed.

When I presented my boarding card at the gate, the agent scanned a row of boarding cards placed in front of her, and found one with my name on it. Seeing that the seat number was the same, she was about to tear the stub of my original boarding card, when her colleague told her to throw it away, and give me the stub of the new one instead.

Once on board, I was pleased to discover that my seat had only one armrest (and therefore no seat recline button), and that the other armrest had been bent into a U-shape. Fortunately I had three seats, and therefore two good armrests, to myself. (there was a half-page article in NRC Handelsblad on October 4 about KLM Engineering & Maintenance : Open raampje, defecte lampjes en missende moeren. Technici van KLM op Schiphol klagen over tijdsdruk bij het onderhoud van vliegtuigen. Engineering staff complain about economics taking precedence over safety).

Having an excellent view of Europe Select, I could see that row 5 was unoccupied. Indeed, two rows would have been quite sufficient to accommodate all the Europe Select pax! Makes you wonder why they chose to reseat all the economy pax from row 5, instead of just moving the divider forward one row. Only takes a couple of seconds.

To round off the experience, we arrived early in AMS, only to find the gate unmanned. As the captain announced, "we have arrived ten minutes early, and seem to have taken everyone by surprise". AMS is KL's home base and one and only hub, so why should they try to keep a tab on incoming flights? No reason to run a smooth operation if you can make a mess of things instead, right?

While waiting for my flight in the CPH Novia lounge, I was forced to listen to a KLM employee who was talking very loudly on his cell phone. He was complaining about falling yields on the CPH route, blaming a successful Dream Sales campaign as well as increasing competition. Both Transavia and Sterling now fly CPH-AMS. He also mentioned an upcoming meeting about Sterling.

How about having a meeting to discuss small matters that contribute to passenger satisfaction and hence loyalty, such as smooth and seamless check-in, proper aircraft cabin maintenance and efficient ground handling at AMS?

Johan