While others may dream of young Asian waifs wrapped in their sarong kebayas, I prefer sturdy Dutch women swaddled in bright blue polyester. (plus I get NW miles)

For me it was the benefit of being able to get almost anywhere from LCY by connecting at AMS which made me avoid the stress of Heathrow.

Upon reaching gold elite LHR doesn't seem as bad anymore with the priority lane and the KLM lounge in LHR is one of their best ones. But still all things being equal then LCY is still preferred.

This does seem to be the common reason why British people use KLM, it has an excellent range of UK regional airports served so if you can't get a direct flight from your local airport then there's a good chance you can fly KL via AMS.

Although if KLM's service levels drop too low then more people may stop using them.

KLM becomes more attractive when one has less choices. Here at SFO, we have surprisingly few choices (given 7 million people live in the Bay area) if we want to fly nonstop to Europe. And even fewer if we want to avoid the mess that is Heathrow:

AF to Paris

LH to Frankfurt or Munich

United to Frankfurt

And KLM to Amsterdam (albeit on the MD-11 for the near future.)

Given those choices, KLM comes out okay. LH is certainly a superior experience overall, especially to Munich with the new A340-600s. CDG is tough for transfers, whereas Schiphol is effortless. While KLM is not great, it is not awful, and their Z fare for business is fairly good. So a lot of it probably depends on your perspective.

KLM's ONLY selling point is price. Ex- France they are very competitive to Asia and even moreso ex UK. On board they are utter hell (unless you are an off duty employee). Schipol is excellent but that has nothing to do with KLM. As long as they continue to be cheaper than the competition they will fill planes.

I fly KLM for the following reasons;

-KLM are always cheap with level flights always available, thus easy to earn miles.

-You get what you pay for (usually)

-I used to be loyal to SAS but everything with that airline has gone down; continously expensive with a reduced service-level across, being put in the back of the plane when it is jam-packed with few people sitting in Econ Extra.

-By coincidence my employer will be Dutch, and based in NL, I believe there will be some KL travel in the future.

But, last week at Schiphol my flight was delayed, first ever on Cityhopper (I've been lucky), 45min before dep. time the status read departed, after a quite angry conversation with the transfer desk who confirmed the flight had not departed I asked at the gate when I got there, their reply: we put on the departed status to get people to the gate. Needless to say there were plenty of angry people. But they did at least offer people a bottle of Spa.

Aha! Exactly...so I appear at the Transfer Desk after early arrival from MSP, four hours until my connection, can I standby for LHR on 1019?

Nee, het is niet moegelijk...

At least the rationale for this wasn't BA's notorious "Sir, your fare class doesn't allow standby." The agent claimed that pax could not standby for earlier connections if it meant that they would not accompany their checked luggage.

Then followed an operational nonupgrade to ES in the usual way.

Incidentally, the machine seems to have grown to a 739.

RTS

Given that they have just dropped three destinations in the Middle East, they must be looking for alternative routes for their 739s.

Johan

Not Tehran, I hope!

Because KL and AF offer a very good network from my travel pattern and when AF is too pricy KL is usually a good alternative in terms of price.