OK everyone, I have deleted over 20 posts from this thread (again), and moved them to a new thread. Please, stay on topic and if you must bicker, don't do it on the thread.

the points from the fuel surcharge thread still need to be updated by Zembla at the top of this one. Particularly the "heads I win, tails you lose" approach KL has for surcharges where they are not part of the ticket when it is convenient for them, but they are part of the ticket when it is not is a biggie.

Improvement: new European fare system from UK
 

Now here's something positive for all you whinging poor creatures to cheer you up ;) :cool:

About a month ago, KLM seem to have introduced a new fare concept for European flights from UK. (Maybe this applies also to flights from outside UK.)

As far as I can see (I have not checked it systematically, I have to concede),
they have greatly improved the concept of semi-flexible Y fares (= "flexible Take Off" fare).

a) These Y fares are more flexible in the sense that they allow for circle trips and double open jaws (as long as you start and end in UK), which saves me quite some money;

b) changing date and time incurs a fee of only EUR 50 instead of EUR 75;

c) the semi-flexible fare band usually starts with the second lowest price available (unless there is a special promotion, in which case it is the third lowest price), so it's rather cheap, which saves me quite some money when I need this flexibility;

d) the semi-flexible fare band normally starts with the lowest fare that gives 100% miles, which implies that the old problem about booking the cheapest 100% fares has finally been solved;

e) the price differences between the cheapest Y fares and the semi-flexible fare band are such that, when taking into account the extra 75% miles, I have not come across a single case where flying the cheapest fare actually is cheaper than the semi-flexible fare. (This holds for someone like me, who values miles at GBP 0.01 per mile and who is a Plat customer.)

As a consequence of e), I now get the benefits of a), b), c), d) for free. Whenever I fly KLM.

What shall I say: :cool::cool::cool:

[For the sake of integrity, I would like to reiterate that I have not systematically checked all European fares from UK. This comment is based only on my personal experience in the past weeks and on my necessarily biased experiences with former fare systems in recent years. So please feel free to correct me where I'm wrong.]

I got very excited when I saw the above post. Unfortunately I haven't been able to check myself because everytime I try to price a ticket the website crashes and says an unkown error has occured. :rolleyes:

Just like they way the KLM website completely froze my computer everytime Í tried to check-in for my flight tomorrow.

I personally find this a very interesting discussion. But apart from the not-refundable fuel surcharge, I think there is nothing objective to be added to this erosion list. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Further, I would like to stress that 3 steps backwards and 1 step forward are still erosion. (ie. tratoria sandwiches short haul catering, new inflight amenity kit in WBC).
And a bit harder to prove as a fact, but I would rather think of them as a cheap marketing tricks to hide erosion.

I think you are absolutely right.

It looks like everything has been said here. Pretty extensive list. Now, what are we going to do with it? I think we should point out to KLM HQ that we are aware of whats going on...

I got the idea the other day of raising money for an "Open Letter to KLM" more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger ad in the IHT or a Dutch newspaper, with a website to funnel comments.

I'd go for the ad in a Dutch paper. It's their national airline and more people reading that paper would want a national airline they could be proud of rather than the cheap arm of AF. In the IHT most people who would see the ad wouldn't care unless they happened to be considering booking a KLM flight at the time.

We all have our reasons for flying KLM - for me it's because it's often less hassle to start a trip at LCY and connect through AMS than going direct from LHR.

Although KLM is my airline of choice, I'd certainly contribute to an ad (as long as the message was agreed on before donating) in order to make more people aware of the erosion in service.

Last time I donated to something like this was the Firefox campaign to get a full page ad in the New York Times, that seems so long ago. Oddly enough that was also around the same time that I took my first KLM flight.

Managed to add an improvement to the list. The possibility to select E instead of N is added to the booking engine (100% instead of 25% miles).

But as to my experience it's not always working. Must have some kind of connection to the award booking tool, which will not show awards in the 2 month range :-)

Great list Zembla!^ Your points are very common!! I dont know if that is a good thing or a bad thing!!
One improvement which I would LOVE to see is being able to do inter-account transfer of miles! I dont think it will ever be possible, but it would be great. i.e. top up someones account who is 30 miles short of an award ticket.. etc..

Another improvement (I think): the online award booking engine now allows to choose up to 9 passengers. Wasn't that 4 before?

I've always remembered it being 9 (at least in the UK), if the limit has been 4 recently then they must have just changed it back.

As the credit card surcharge is per person :mad: booking 9 adults would mean a £27 cc surcharge and if for some reason you wanted paper tickets an additional £225 surcharge!

I'm not sure if offering paper tickets online is an enhancement (I can't see any reason for them) but being able to opt for a paper ticket online seems to have sprung up on the UK website sometime over the course of the year.

As for the 738 and 739 seats, there seems to be a lot of positive comments here about these seats. These seats are the lightweight seats that are 1kg less than the previous seats. I remember a lot of negative comments about these when they were launched, have we grown to like them or have the people who hate these seats just not commented on them here? Then again getting a seat to please everyone can be awkward, but it's good to see that they've managed to please some with the new seat (at the expense of losing the 2-3 ES seating that was there before it in the 739 :td:).

The KL website seems to be more unreliable this year, sometimes totally impossible to book with Firefox but I've better luck with Safari than most. When it does work there's been some improvements such as the ability to select the 100% mileage fares easily. On the bad side there's still this long running bug where sometimes it only lists 3 options (Economy, Econ Flexible, Biz) and this is the only option when making a multi leg booking.

On the positive side you can book AF fares now on the KL site, although this is not integrated as well as I'd like it still means I can fly KL one way and AF the other. This has been useful for CityJet flights where I can fly AF one way and return on KL on a Sunday when CityJet's schedule is poor.

Reading between posts in various threads one could conclude that we have grown to like them. My guess is that the negative comments at the time were triggered by the somewhat arrogant way KLM presented them at the time of introduction, they made it sound as if they were introducing F chairs (I remember that "state of the art" is one of the marketing slogans the've used).