flyingcrazy

Hi guys,

I see the Netherlands is shutting cafes, restaurants and bars for 4 weeks, and banning alcohol sales after 8pm.

Does anyone know if the KLM lounge will be closing as a result? Or if self service food and drinks will not be available anymore?

Got a 5 hour layover coming up soon, will not be much fun otherwise!

FC

Ditto

There is an exemption for restaurants that are airside, when I was there 2 weeks ago food wasn't self service anyway.

EricVdb

The new restrictions are not applicable to establishments after security checkpoints on airports. So KLM doesn't have to change (of course they still might, but I'm not sure there is a decision made allready)

flyingcrazy

I dont use KLM often but when I do my formula is a nice meal from the buffet, a couple pints of Heineken from the self serve tap and a shower.

So you guys know if food/beer/shower will be possible now?

Also is food available but served now? I saw that self service food isn't available in a post above.

johan rebel

Has any KLM lounge ever served such a thing?

Can't answer your question I'm afraid, I use the Privium lounges.

Johan

Ditto

I'm not sure if it qualifies as "nice" but I suppose if you take enough it might be considered a "meal".
When I was there they had 2 choices of "main": "Sloppy joe" which was a cheese-burger and a "Pita Gyros" where you get a mini-sized pita with some meat on top of it, 2 slices of cucumber, 2 slices of tomato and some lettuce, other than that there was a soup, some sandwiches and some desserts.
All options are served on a tiny tray which hardly have space for a single plate and cutlery, good luck!

flyingcrazy

As long as there is heineken on tap and a shower I shall be happy! Were those still there last time you were there? Or has the covid hysteria taken that from me too?

gopher99

I flew from AMS to Brazil on Monday, and the lounge was fine. They serve you drinks instead of you getting them yourself, and the food is also served for you.I agree the tray they serve it on is tiny, so you will need to go back and get another plate😀.

maalloc

I agree with you, Heineken on tap is what makes AMS lounge worth the visit.
Last time I went there (a few weeks ago, everything might have changed this week), tap beer was still available in the Schengen lounge (which closes at noon though).

On the Non-Schengen lounge (which you can still access if you have enough time to go through immigration both ways), Covid stripped us of this option. You have to queue & ask for every drink, except coffee which is still self-service. It totally makes sense as SARS-COV-2 is known to linger for hours on tap handles, but dies within 10 seconds on a coffee machine button.

flyertalker28120

The more fundamental issue is that if people stuck to mask, hygiene, and distance rules we wouldn't need many of the restrictions put in place during the last few days.

Sure, actions specifically targeting alcohol-related activities are part cliche. But part of it is that some people get uninhibited and are even less inclined to follow mask/hygiene/distancing guidelines when drinking.

Again, if people adhered to the most fundamental rules on masks/hygiene/distancing, we probably wouldn't need rules which are in principle less effective but easier to enforce.

maalloc

That's an optimistic way to put it.
The fact is that this epidemic's dynamics are still wildly unknown, rules are very arbitrary (ie. varying from place to place and from time to time) with effects that are still highly debated amongst specialists. As frequent travellers, we are well-placed to notice that "common sense" in a country is called "total bull****" somewhere else. Covid-19 highlights this fact in a crude light. Rules are dictated by politics and social acceptability, not by obvious science reasons (otherwise all countries would have agreed a long time ago on the exact same set of rules and would have had the exact same results).

Going back to the lounge offering topic, while I will agree that uninhibited pax are more likely to relax their behaviour, and that it could present a problem (it already did before Covid), I would still like to see some consistency.
Having Heineken and spirits freely available cannot be both OK in one lounge 25 and a safety threat in lounge 52. I'm pretty sure the virus does not care which side of immigration it is on.

flyertalker28120

I'm sure there soon will be. At least if they haven't shut down completely in a few weeks due to lack of passengers. October traffic in Europe is going to be catastrophically low. Not as low as in April/May, but certainly some of the faint recovery is going to be reversed.

I hear you that some rules are not 100% based on hard evidence. Not just governmental rules, but KL also has to make some things up as they go along. But a super-spreading event in one of their AMS lounges would not be good for their image. If they get the feeling people in their lounges don't adhere to the scientifically completely uncontroversial mask/hygience/distancing rules, they might feel the need to come up with additional rules. And that may appear arbitrary at times.

I haven't been at KL's AMS lounge this month. But in the previous months, I def noticed a subset of people which didn't follow the rules..

maalloc

The problem is not that rules are arbitrary (by definition, all rules are). It's when their inconsistency is too obvious, then there is no way to take them seriously.

Alcohol is free-flowing in Schengen lounge and harder to get in Non-Schengen lounge. So alcohol-consuming PAX must not be that big of a deal.
Coffee machines and water taps are open in the NS lounge, but beer tap are out of order. So the handling of taps and machines must not be spreading Covid or they would have shut them all off (by the way they did in April before re-opening the coffee machines later on).

I'm not even talking about other lounges in Europe (once again, rules are by definition arbitrary so no need to discuss this)... I'm talking about inconsistencies between two KL-operated lounges, 340 meters apart!
So while I'm all in favour for being careful, we should still call bull*** when we see it. In this case, it's quite obvious.

flyertalker28120

You can formulate rules arbitrarily. But the rule that is picked among the large (possible infinite) number of rules one can come up with is certainly not chosen arbitrarily.

maalloc

OK, I'll bite.
I would be very interested in hearing which adjective you would choose to describe the rules, explained in the previous posts, that apply to KL Lounge 52 but not KL Lounge 25.

"arbitrary" seems to fit quite well, but I'd love to hear your suggestions.