KLM

[dmrodgers]

Re: KLM cityhopper B.V

Just wondered if anyone has had problems with KLM recently. Having wanted to fly from his local airport my son booked a return flight with KLM to Dubai via Schiphol. The return leg was to be so simple, direct to Schiphol, 60 mins wait in Dubai before the luchtime flight to LBS. Returning today from Dubai he checked in online 6 hours before the flight was due to depart at 06.55, however on arrival at Dubai he was informed that the flight KL430 had been cancelled and that he was now booked on an Emirates flight to Paris CDG. From here he would have to get an Air France flight to Schiphol and then the KLM flight back to LBA. What wasn't mentioned at the time was the 7 hours wait in Paris before the flight to Schiphol and his flight to LBA would now be KL1551 departing 21.10 (20.10) arriving in Leeds 21.22. (He was originally booked on the KL1549 arriving at 13.55). To make matters worse he was not offered an upgrades and was left in Paris for 7 hours without any food or drink having last had something on the Emirates flight 2 hours earlier. Despite argueing with the Air France/KLM desk in Paris they were unwilling to allow access to the business lounge or flight upgrade. As the Air France is an internal flight to Schiphol I doubt whether he will be offered anything on the flight. The connection at Schiphol to Leeds is 35 mins so any flight delay will mean him missing the last flight to LBA today. As you can imagine I am disgusted with the way my son has been treated and a strong letter of protest will be going to KLM.

Wondered if any this is a regular occurance with KLM, perhaps next time he should book an Emirates flight out of Birmingham! So much for trying to use our local airport though I appreciate LBA had nothing to do with the appalling standard of service offered by KLM. I dred to think where his luggage may be, that's if we ever see it again.

 

[WYIA]

Re: KLM cityhopper B.V

Depending on the circumstances, European law requires airlines to provide assistance to passengers during delays. This includes catering, communications and overnight accommodation if necessary. If a delay extends beyond five hours, passengers can request a refund if they choose not to travel. If a flight is cancelled alternative flight options should be offered. Where these are unacceptable a full ticket refund should be provided, and in some instances compensation.

Upgrades are generally not considered unless the delay equates to an unscheduled overnight stop & still then the class equivalent to the ticket price will be allocated unless the cabin is overbooked. Airlines will also not permit lounge access for non cardholders or business class ticket holders. Allowing all delayed passengers to use the lounge would rubbish the product concept and be unfair to the passengers who pay a premium to use the facility.

Refer to EU passenger rights to find out more information on delay/cancellation rights & to see if your son should have been provided with food & drink at Paris.

I imagine your sons bag will transit without an issue between Paris & Amsterdam but they do recommend a minimum of 50 minutes for luggage transfers at Amsterdam.

If your sons baggage does not arrive at Leeds, ensure a report is logged with Servisair baggage facilities in arrivals. The airline is then responsible for sending the bag on the next flight possible and furthermore dispatching it to an address of your choice.


It is unfortunate that it has not worked out this time, last week people had 20 hour delays just because of ATC strikes.

Because of Air France KLM’s network and partners, re routing is usually possible quite quickly where as a direct flight with Emirates who does not have such close partner synergy would have probably resulted in a greater delay for your son should it have been cancelled.

These things do happen but not on a regular & not just at Air France KLM.

You may find comfort in the fact that cancelling an A330/B777 Dubai flight will have cost the airline many hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Out of interest, did they give a reason for the cancellation?

 

[WYIA]

Re: KLM cityhopper B.V

Further to above;

I see the aircraft inbound to Dubai arrived early so my guess is that the aircraft had a technical issue preventing it departing again or a crew member became ill.

 

[dmrodgers]

Re: KLM cityhopper B.V

No reason given for cancellation, only consolation is that the Emirates leg to Paris CDG was operated by an Airbus A380 Reg A6 EDD. He's now the envy of the family being lucky enough to have traveled on this type of aircraft. Just been to LBA to pick him up, 5 mins early from Schiphol.

 

[WYIA]

Re: KLM cityhopper B.V

wow fantastic, A380! Every cloud an all that. Glad he arrived back ok & bags?

 

[dmrodgers]

Re: KLM cityhopper B.V

Baggage arrived OK as well, now that's a surprise. Letter off to KLM today so will see what their response is. Asked for a free flight to Dubai, may be lucky to get one to Amsterdam, but you'll never get anything if you don't try.

 

[pilot_737]

Re: KLM cityhopper B.V

Flying to Dubai, I would recomend taking the Emirates Manchester flight any day! My friend uses them a lot and he has nothing but praise for them.

The service will also be upgraded to an A380 in September!

 

[WYIA]

Re: KLM cityhopper B.V

PH-EZF Embraer 190 is operating the KL1549/1550 today replacing the FK70. Dont know if this is because of a tec Fk70 or to get back lots of stranded people thanks to French ATC yesterday, the loads yesterday where 50% of what they where booked at.

 

[backtrack]

Re: KLM cityhopper B.V

PH-EZF Embraer 190 is operating the KL1549/1550 today replacing the FK70. Dont know if this is because of a tec Fk70 or to get back lots of stranded people thanks to French ATC yesterday, the loads yesterday where 50% of what they where booked at.

And very nice indeed it was to see it...

 

[WYIA]

Re: KLM cityhopper B.V

I have to admit it is a very sharp looking aircraft and the klm livery looks well on it. The 190LR seems to look spot on where as the 195 looks abit tooo long. Just hope more will be ordered in the months ahead and they look at replacing the Fk70, some are just over half the age of the F100's and yet have the same reliability issues.

Indeed tec Fk70 aircraft was the reason an E190 showed yesterday.

 

[WYIA]

Re: KLM cityhopper B.V

So here is something interesting, KLM is doing a Ryanair!

The airline is refusing to pay out claims for hotel & expenses from passengers stuck in the ash crisis.

The airline said EU rules are grossly unfair and damaging to airlines who are expected to cover expenses sometimes double the cost of the ticket when the event was caused by a "Natural disaster".

Just as passengers can not claim on insurance for this event, nor can the airline.

The EU has said it is protecting passenger rights and will take KLM to court if it does not pay out.

Who’s protecting the airlines?

What does everyone else think, should the airlines pay up, should the passengers just accept the expenses or should the governments pay out to passengers.

 

[masere]

Re: KLM cityhopper B.V

It's a difficult one isn't it? The government shouldn't pay though. I think the airlines should pay on this occasion and then simply state that they will not pay in future. Thankfully something like this has never happened to me - my views may be different though if it ever did!

 

[Seasider]

Re: KLM cityhopper B.V

I think the problem here is that nowadays, if something goes wrong, its somebody's fault and they should pay compensation.
Why should the airline pay? they were stopped from flying.
I think it is time that we realised that sometimes when it goes wrong, we have to accept that the expense etc is down to us.
This "litigation culture" needs removing from our society.

 

[TheLocalYokel]

Re: KLM cityhopper B.V

On this occasion the situation is further complicated by governments banning all flying because of the ash when some airlines contended it was an over-reaction in that they they could have flown some routes.

Someone will lose out in these situations - either the airline, the passenger or the taxpayer.

I suppose airlines will say not us, passengers will say not us and tax payers will say certainly not us.

South Australia and Victoria may be about to have their own problems with a plague of locusts forecast for the next few months (the antipodean spring) in the sort of proportions that have occurred only twice in the past hundred years - the 1930s and the 1970s. On the last occasion Tullamarine Airport in Melbourne was significantly affected and flights were cancelled.

 

[dmrodgers]

Re: KLM cityhopper B.V

It's not just ash clouds that KLM are refusing to pay out on. My son had his flight cancelled by KLM from Dubai to Leeds via AMS in May leaving him to catch 3 flights to get back to Leeds arriving more than 12 hours later than scheduled and to date are ingnoring all emails. He was left to pay for all food and drink and incurred further expenses as he had to use his mobile abroad to make alternative arrangements.


So much for trying to use his local airport, KLM have probably driven another passenger to our rivals Manchester where he can get an Emirates flight direct to Dubai and an Airbus A380 into the bargain from September.

 

[Aviador]

Re: KLM cityhopper B.V

If anyone should cough up it should be the insurance companies. They're forever trying to get out of paying for things yet that's why people take out an insurance policy in the first place - to cover any eventuality.

 

[WYIA]

Re: KLM cityhopper B.V

Yes that’s disgusting, they should not have cancelled that flight. They should have operated it as normal with the technical problem then sent you an apology letter when the plane crashed.

Yes try manchester, sure that Emirates never have delays.

KLM will no doubt reply to your email when they have finished sifting through claims for dog grooming due to an extra night stuck in Paris due to the ash clouds.

Anyway back on topic. Ash cloud pay outs. Constructive thoughts anyone?

 

[Bigman]

Re: KLM cityhopper B.V

Sue Iceland as it was their volcano, invade Iceland and confiscate all the brass you can find in their bank vaults seeing as they owe British pension funds millions, and finally restart the cod war with...yes you guessed it...Iceland (and I don't mean a price war with Jack Fultons ether!!).

 

[WYIA]

Re: KLM cityhopper B.V

lol. to be honest i feel the EU should pay out. The public pay enough into it and the money goes on some seriously shoddy projects. In circumstances like this perhaps the public are entitled to some money back!

A serious review of passenger rights is needed & soon. I fear many airlines will fall if they have to continue paying out left right and centre. Air fares will start to shoot up, less people will be able to afford to travel and the airlines still flying will have monopolies. So how does this protect passengers!

 

[TheLocalYokel]

Re: KLM cityhopper B.V

On this occasion there is an argument that governments or the EU should at least help significantly in meeting the airlines' costs resulting from the ash clouds given governments effectively decided on the blanket flight ban.

I'm not so sure about a general policy though. Give some airlines an inch (or centimetre in these decimal days) and they will take a mile (or kilometre).

Take easyJet for example. They have been cancelling flights across the board for many weeks, and quietly taking others out of the system completely for a few weeks so they don't show as cancellations on the day.

They mainly try to blame industrial action by French, Spanish and Greek air traffic control staff even when there is no official or even unofficial strike by saying that many of these controllers are actually working to rule. This, they say, means delayed slots leading eventually to cancelled flights.

That may be the case on some occasions even though a rival such as Ryanair flying from the same airports doesn't seem to experience the same level of delays or cancellations when using broadly the same airspace.

Many aviation journalists, people in the trade and even easyJet's own staff (amply illustrated from staff comments on sites such as the Dried Plum) assert that the main reason is crewing levels.

The airline has eventually conceded that this does add to its problems.

So Joe Public or T L Yokel has no way of knowing whether his cancelled flight is really down to reasons beyond the airline's control (atc industrial action) or incompetence by senior airline management (inadequate crewing levels), an important consideration when it comes to recompense for delayed or cancelled flights.