KLM trying hard to make things worse at Schipol
Jul 17, 2022, 1:19 am
#31
FlyerTalk Evangelist
Join Date: Oct 2000
Posts: 14,352
Johan
Jul 17, 2022, 1:26 am
#32
FlyerTalk Evangelist
Join Date: Oct 2000
Posts: 14,352
Jul 17, 2022, 9:07 am
#33
Original Poster
Join Date: Jun 2022
Posts: 15
To be clear
I was very specific with my experience and observations...it would help if you actually read carefully what I wrote...and when referring to you specifically, I stated quite clearly , IN MY OPINION , your behaviour was so odd that it leads to my conclusion.
And if you were 'balance' and 'behaved' in the way you see yourself, you would have immediately suggested real methods for navigating the self made disaster at Schipol and more importantly in my case and opinion, how to navigate KLM's poor response and crisis management.
Shameful you think I am not allowed to share my experience as I see fit, demonstrable by your unprovoked attacks. And as predicted your need to have the last word and continue your baseless descriptions. At the end of the day, KLM has performed poorly since the moment I checked in and you just have to accept it.
You have an oversized sense of entitlement about yourself and how you conduct yourself on this board, a little self reflection would go a long way in your case.
Have a good weekend.
I was very specific with my experience and observations...it would help if you actually read carefully what I wrote...and when referring to you specifically, I stated quite clearly , IN MY OPINION , your behaviour was so odd that it leads to my conclusion.
And if you were 'balance' and 'behaved' in the way you see yourself, you would have immediately suggested real methods for navigating the self made disaster at Schipol and more importantly in my case and opinion, how to navigate KLM's poor response and crisis management.
Shameful you think I am not allowed to share my experience as I see fit, demonstrable by your unprovoked attacks. And as predicted your need to have the last word and continue your baseless descriptions. At the end of the day, KLM has performed poorly since the moment I checked in and you just have to accept it.
You have an oversized sense of entitlement about yourself and how you conduct yourself on this board, a little self reflection would go a long way in your case.
Have a good weekend.
Jul 17, 2022, 11:45 am
#34
Join Date: Oct 2019
Programs: Flying Blue, Hilton Honors, Amtrak Guest Rewards
Posts: 2,395
For better or worse, this forum (the KLM forum specifically) is a community. Like any other community, it has norms (explicit and tacit) and a culture (what is rewarded and what is punished) that have evolved over the years. It behooves one entering any community to first observe and get a sense of the norms, lest members of the community draw the inference that one is not interested in contributing to the community.
If you want someone you can vent frustrations to and perhaps be affirmed, get a dog or perhaps hire a therapist of some sort. A report of a four hour delay at immigration and lost bags at Schiphol does not in and of itself warrant a new thread: it quite clearly fits in the "Mess in AMS" thread. Deciding you are so important as to warrant a thread of your own suggests that you want to be the main character and, lo and behold, you are.
Self-reflection is often in short supply.
If you want someone you can vent frustrations to and perhaps be affirmed, get a dog or perhaps hire a therapist of some sort. A report of a four hour delay at immigration and lost bags at Schiphol does not in and of itself warrant a new thread: it quite clearly fits in the "Mess in AMS" thread. Deciding you are so important as to warrant a thread of your own suggests that you want to be the main character and, lo and behold, you are.
Self-reflection is often in short supply.
Jul 17, 2022, 2:16 pm
#36
Join Date: Nov 2021
Programs: FB
Posts: 195
Let's do a little reflection, and I'll take the opportunity to tell a long story with a simple point.
Yes, the original post didn't just complain about missing bags, but also mentioned that there was no customer service. Or rather, that the few people there were woefully incapable of serving the needs of the throngs of passengers with issues
Now, let's go back to 2009, the week before Christmas. It was snowing heavily in Northern France and southern England. Four Eurostar trains trundled across the countryside, gathering snow up top. Then, they went into the Chunnel, where temperatures were around 40-50 degrees. The snow melted, and shorted the electrics out. Suddenly, thousands of people were in pitch-dark carriages under the Channel, with no air-conditioning and no idea what would happen next. At the time, the Eurostar administration declared that it was a completely unknown defect that had never happened before, and there was no way they could have mitigated it.
Now, unless I'm missing something, that was not true.
Mardi gras, 1996, a friend was to take the train to Paris to visit. It was snowing. He contacted me to say that his train was cancelled and he'd be on the one arriving at Gare du Nord 30 minutes later, at 1600. I went down to the station. After an hour or so, the train after his was arriving, and I went to see what was up, and heard about the train "en panne". So I went home and had dinner and a nap.
In effect, they drove slowly to the Chunnel and stopped for thirty minutes before entering for systems checks or some such nonsense. Meanwhile, the train accumulated snow on top. They made it fifteen minutes under the Channel, when everything died. Meanwhile, up top, the snowstorm got worse, and pretty much all rail traffic in NW France got suspended.
Following 3615 SNCF, I came back to Gare du Nord at 2300. They'd then said midnight. They closed the station then, but kept someone there so we could wait, and the passengers could make it in. 1 AM. 2. 3. 4. 4:15. At some point, I realize I'm waiting also out of a combination of solidarity and curiosity.
Sometime after six hours in the dark, under the Channel, with no air and battery-powered alarms capable of waking the dead at 300 kph when a door was opened, they managed to tow the disabled train to Calais, and put all the passengers on the platform there.
Then, hours later, with the entire rail network practically shutdown from the snow, they mustered a regional train, with just enough seats for everyone on the Eurostar. They crammed everyone in there, and slowly moved to Paris.
And that way, at 4:15, I get up, and look down at the platform. People are running from this regional train in all directions.
I get down there, and at the head of the train, someone in full Eurostar regalia is hanging out something with the dimensions of a ticket. Passengers, expecting a reward, take one, take a step, open it, and see it's a generic "Sorry for any inconvenience" brochure, and swear in a variety of tongues.
At one point, some dude with RP English goes up to the poor brochure shoveler and says: "you really should have more people out here."
Morals of the story:
Companies, especially for-profit companies, do not handle IRROPS well. They've streamlined everything for normal situations, and expect customers to suffer when things go wrong. Ideally, the government can pay for it.
For us, that means that, when something goes wrong, those who know what the problem is have their hands full talking with those who could solve the problem, and communication to the front lines is not a priority.
That also means that, what can look like a complete abandonment of passengers to their predicament, may in fact be a heroic tale of moving mountains against impossible odds: these people were such in a stuffy, hot train for hours, then made to freeze in the snow on the platform in Calais, before being crammed in an aging commuter train for hours, arriving twelve hours late. At the same time, people moved heaven and earth to pull them out of there, to find a train to drag then to their destination, when the entire network was shut down from a snow storm, and to keep one of the largest stations in Paris open for over four hours past its closing time (and, mind you, this is French unionized labour).
So, never assume the schmuck handing you brochures at 4:15 in the morning is part of the problem.
Finally, as the same issue happened thirteen years later, institutional memory is a myth. Passengers, on the other hand, never get hired away, laid off in restructuring, nor become irrelevant.
In short: yeah, that's what happens. Airlines can't handle a cancellation at an outstation, and, at the hub, the slightest disruption leads to hell. The employees do what they can, but there's nowhere near enough of them. If the airport is privately run, you're even more screwed. AMS in the beforetimes was bad when the wind came the wrong way. This summer, it's a monumental disaster. And yet people work miracles to get things at their current level of dysfunction.
And here are people, probably the only ones who seem to remember these things, and can advise on the current status, how to avoid, mitigate, survive, and recover.
Yes, the original post didn't just complain about missing bags, but also mentioned that there was no customer service. Or rather, that the few people there were woefully incapable of serving the needs of the throngs of passengers with issues
Now, let's go back to 2009, the week before Christmas. It was snowing heavily in Northern France and southern England. Four Eurostar trains trundled across the countryside, gathering snow up top. Then, they went into the Chunnel, where temperatures were around 40-50 degrees. The snow melted, and shorted the electrics out. Suddenly, thousands of people were in pitch-dark carriages under the Channel, with no air-conditioning and no idea what would happen next. At the time, the Eurostar administration declared that it was a completely unknown defect that had never happened before, and there was no way they could have mitigated it.
Now, unless I'm missing something, that was not true.
Mardi gras, 1996, a friend was to take the train to Paris to visit. It was snowing. He contacted me to say that his train was cancelled and he'd be on the one arriving at Gare du Nord 30 minutes later, at 1600. I went down to the station. After an hour or so, the train after his was arriving, and I went to see what was up, and heard about the train "en panne". So I went home and had dinner and a nap.
In effect, they drove slowly to the Chunnel and stopped for thirty minutes before entering for systems checks or some such nonsense. Meanwhile, the train accumulated snow on top. They made it fifteen minutes under the Channel, when everything died. Meanwhile, up top, the snowstorm got worse, and pretty much all rail traffic in NW France got suspended.
Following 3615 SNCF, I came back to Gare du Nord at 2300. They'd then said midnight. They closed the station then, but kept someone there so we could wait, and the passengers could make it in. 1 AM. 2. 3. 4. 4:15. At some point, I realize I'm waiting also out of a combination of solidarity and curiosity.
Sometime after six hours in the dark, under the Channel, with no air and battery-powered alarms capable of waking the dead at 300 kph when a door was opened, they managed to tow the disabled train to Calais, and put all the passengers on the platform there.
Then, hours later, with the entire rail network practically shutdown from the snow, they mustered a regional train, with just enough seats for everyone on the Eurostar. They crammed everyone in there, and slowly moved to Paris.
And that way, at 4:15, I get up, and look down at the platform. People are running from this regional train in all directions.
I get down there, and at the head of the train, someone in full Eurostar regalia is hanging out something with the dimensions of a ticket. Passengers, expecting a reward, take one, take a step, open it, and see it's a generic "Sorry for any inconvenience" brochure, and swear in a variety of tongues.
At one point, some dude with RP English goes up to the poor brochure shoveler and says: "you really should have more people out here."
Morals of the story:
Companies, especially for-profit companies, do not handle IRROPS well. They've streamlined everything for normal situations, and expect customers to suffer when things go wrong. Ideally, the government can pay for it.
For us, that means that, when something goes wrong, those who know what the problem is have their hands full talking with those who could solve the problem, and communication to the front lines is not a priority.
That also means that, what can look like a complete abandonment of passengers to their predicament, may in fact be a heroic tale of moving mountains against impossible odds: these people were such in a stuffy, hot train for hours, then made to freeze in the snow on the platform in Calais, before being crammed in an aging commuter train for hours, arriving twelve hours late. At the same time, people moved heaven and earth to pull them out of there, to find a train to drag then to their destination, when the entire network was shut down from a snow storm, and to keep one of the largest stations in Paris open for over four hours past its closing time (and, mind you, this is French unionized labour).
So, never assume the schmuck handing you brochures at 4:15 in the morning is part of the problem.
Finally, as the same issue happened thirteen years later, institutional memory is a myth. Passengers, on the other hand, never get hired away, laid off in restructuring, nor become irrelevant.
In short: yeah, that's what happens. Airlines can't handle a cancellation at an outstation, and, at the hub, the slightest disruption leads to hell. The employees do what they can, but there's nowhere near enough of them. If the airport is privately run, you're even more screwed. AMS in the beforetimes was bad when the wind came the wrong way. This summer, it's a monumental disaster. And yet people work miracles to get things at their current level of dysfunction.
And here are people, probably the only ones who seem to remember these things, and can advise on the current status, how to avoid, mitigate, survive, and recover.
Jul 18, 2022, 9:06 am
#37
Join Date: Sep 2016
Location: San Francisco, CA
Programs: Flying Blue Platinum, JetBlue Mosaic, Hyatt Globalist, Alaska MVP Gold.
Posts: 1,962
Really well said and written BubbaX. Never shoot the messenger(s) — and realize that everything is in a state of disarray now. That's not to say things are fine and should be acceptable, but a little perspective goes a long way.
Jul 19, 2022, 1:03 am
#38
Join Date: Jul 2005
Location: 39000ft
Posts: 955
To be honest, being around queues and everything this summer, I have never seen a single pax. shouting at a poor employee trying to help them or do their job. Which was not a thing in the past. Perhaps my sample is biased or I am that naive to believe that for this summer of chaos, passengers (well, many of them) are more aware about who is responsible.
Jul 19, 2022, 4:36 am
#40
Join Date: Jan 2022
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Posts: 641
Jul 19, 2022, 4:44 am
#42
Join Date: Jan 2022
Location: VLC
Programs: FB Plat (Y3), All Accor Gold (Y2)
Posts: 641
Surely they won't wait until exactly 15 days to cancel if they can cancel earlier. Nor will they not cancel if within the 14 day period to avoid the EU regulations - if they need to cancel they cancel.