The doomed

Because it's all a little bit crazy just now

fly747first

The Air France-KLM group hasn't gotten rid of its large network planning team and it is their responsibility to assign the correct aircraft to flights...

Meneer Guggenheimer

First world problems.. love those!

Xandrios

How about that these people may be otherwise occupied..for example by organizing a whole bunch of specialty one-of-a-kind flights. We see the craziest (not normally scheduled) routes being flown these days.

Additionally, like said above...planning which aircraft will operate which route must not be a high priority right now. In fact I believe they may purposefully not be planning these - they would likely have to re-do that work anyway depending on the demand at that moment in time. Right now they don't really have the ability to plan month(s) ahead. Things work day-to-day and nobody knows how things will be tomorrow.

fly747first

Have you ever worked for an airline or even in any analytical capacity at all? Large network airlines have huge planning teams and currently, they are operating an extremely limited schedule so it's not as if they have to figure out tons and tons of new routes and frequencies. The idea that they are so busy with almost 90% of the capacity cut is absurd.

Djokison

But what would be the point of changing the schedules? KLM has no idea what flights they’ll be flying in May, nor with what equipment, nor the time. You might as well leave all the flights as placeholders, just as they’re doing.

You’re just being mad to be mad, I suggest you dedicate your quarantine time to something more useful...

Meneer Guggenheimer

fly747first

KLM, like most large airlines, actively revenue manages both passenger fares and cargo. Doesn't make much sense to leave a 747/747Combi assigned to certain flights if they will end up being operated by smaller 787 aircraft that don't nearly have the same cargo capacity, for instance.

Also, I don't see why KLM hasn't even publicly acknowledged the retirement of its 747 fleet. I guess the web design team is also sooooo busy that they haven't removed the 747 from KLM's fleet page.

I'm not mad at all... just blessed to be far more analytical than some of you.

Fabo.sk

Really.

That's what they priority should be now. To update the fleet page.

"Hey, how about we fix the self-service cancellation to be in line with current workflow?" "Screw that, update the fleet page instead! The public needs to know!"

Good grief.

747jetter

Good old days...remember commuting between PRG and HKG, I always jumped on 747. Rides on upper deck were great. My dad's first J was from SFO to AMS, 72A and 72B. Crew gave us bottle of champagne so we served ourselves. I also managed to get on JFK-AMS last year on my birthday, after already celebrating 18 hours on SIN-EWR and day in New York. The longest possible birthday ended up riding 747 on 72A back to Europe. Week later, AMS-JFK was my final flight on 747. I will miss going downstairs to grab some Mentols in the galley haha.

Redheadpeter

And the movie used real 35 or 16mm film which went through a series of projectors - so you could see the same bit of the movia several times

Meneer Guggenheimer

probably 8mm film used.

35mm reels are massive and very heavy... a film is about 30kg if it is a average length.

ATOBTTR

Seriously.... I was scheduled to be on a 747 later this summer (booked specifically for the 747) but now it looks like I won't get to fly it based on the news. I came here to see if there were any published updates about what changes would be, if they had been determined, but they're not and that's okay! Clearly KLM has bigger issues at the moment to figure out. I highly doubt any route that had a 747 on it and now is going to have something else is at risk of being sold out, either because it was in the near term and there were enough cancellations or the flight was far enough out that close-in business travel hadn't booked yet. And yea, what demand will be will now be difficult to predict so I doubt KLM's team that does this has much to go off since a good chunk of the historical data that would be used is out the window now so no, no one should be shocked that KLM hasn't determined what to put where yet.

Fabo.sk

Unless the virus just disappears immediately, or somehow a cheap and already widely available cure proves to be effective in the next couple of weeks, I think we can pretty confidently say, that the overall airline system capacity will go way down and the 747 sadly will not be needed ever more. I'm quite bummed about it, I really wanted to fly on one before they were gone for good. I guess that the Lelystad one will stay my singular upper-deck experience.

Maestro Ramen

I have fond memories of this flight in a 747 Combi. It was fairly recently after 9/11.

Was travelling with Mrs and young child. We almost missed the flight at Schiphol, absolute panic. We were sat in an upstairs brasserie having lunch before the flight, as I forgot to readjust my wristwatch/Nokia phone from the UK I thought the boarding time was 1 hour later than what it actually was...ouch. Then we heard on the intercom "Last call for boarding" and our heart started racing... I threw 50 british pounds at the waiter (not even euros) while apologizing and running away simultaneously. Our massive hand luggage was in lockers, but here's the catch: we had forgotten to take our passports out when renting the lockers so the attendant had to reopen/lock it for us, rendering the code unusable and we had to call the attendant to open them again... The stress!!! The attendant came on a minibus and when he saw how panicked we were offered to drive us to the gate, which of course was at the very extreme end of the D pier. What a champion!

After making our flight everything went smooth. We were sat in the very forward part of Y, at the left side, where the right is occupied by galleys. (it became economy comfort soonafter). This was the most comfortable Y seats in the most comfortable area of the most comfortable plane! The flight attendants were so kind (probably the child effect) and I remember having many conversations with them. Then after nightfall, the FA invited me and my kid to go to the cockpit.... something I thought impossible after 9/11. The child was meant to be the guest star, but I must shamingly admit that I ended up being the biggest child and stole all the amazement, I asked the pilots many things about the bird, the combi routes they flew. They were absolutely passsionate about their job; let us snap a few pictures together; and the best of all, we got to see some northern lights from the very cockpit.

That was an unforgettable experience that has earned KLM a long term attachment from me and my family. Good bye big blue bird.... you will be missed