KLM

[LBAYORKIE]

See we have an E170 on the night stopper tonight along with 2 out of 3 flights tomorrow. Suppose we should be thankful all 3 look to be operating, but so much for an all E190 operation. I for one am not amused -again!

No, not good. If its anything like the situation 3 weekends ago KLM will email pax telling them they are prioritising pax with connections and anyone point to point gets 'bumped' off the flight.

 

[pug]

I hear two more E190 are in the process of being procured by Eastern for rollout onto the KLM contract in due course. Not sure if these are intended as redundancy for the current network or for expansion into more airports.

Shunting people off flights assumes that the flights are full, this may not be the case all the time but I accept will occur on occasion as it does on KLM. I’d be interested to hear what the airport have to say when @White Heather attends the CC, but I suspect their hands are tied with it.

This constant looking for negatives is again unhelpful in my view. Criticism where necessary is fine, but I know there’s a long running dislike of Eastern which predates the KLM contract. This is not the same and it’s not helpful because you really must be careful what you wish for.. From what I’m hearing all is not exactly rosy within KLC and it’s a toxic and chaotic operation in its own right. Like I say, be VERY careful what you wish for. I suspect there’d be some who would complain even if the schedule was running to perfection..

 

[Finger66]

This constant looking for negatives is again unhelpful in my view. Criticism where necessary is fine, but I know there’s a long running dislike of Eastern which predates the KLM contract. This is not the same and it’s not helpful because you really must be careful what you wish for.. From what I’m hearing all is not exactly rosy within KLC and it’s a toxic and chaotic operation in its own right. Like I say, be VERY careful what you wish for. I suspect there’d be some who would complain even if the schedule was running to perfection..

This is about stating facts, not anything about any long running dislike of Eastern. The fact is that we were supposed to get an all E190 operation and we are not. If that is because some flights are not full then so be it, but I suspect that is not the case and pax are being offloaded from some flights.
Last weekends situation clearly also showed a bias towards MAN who have enough extra/alternative flights so why not just delay ours - appreciating no help for connections.
And I for one am not commenting (other than E170 Vs E190) when the schedule does run smoothly just stating less than acceptable facts.
It will be very interesting to see what comes out of the CCM later this month.
And yes let's hope the two additional E190s joining the fleet improve reliability and resilience as clearly no point in taking on too much more when the current is clearly struggling.
And what an all round mess if things are not all that rosy within KLCH itself. Maybe it is time for the official return of KLMUK!

 

[Severn]

Looking at the facts:

Over the last 30 days there have been 90 departures (3x daily) scheduled for Eastern E190s. Of these 90 flights:

• 3 flights have been cancelled (3%)
• 2 flights have been operated by KLM (1x B737 and 1x E190) - coloured blue below
• 12 flights have been operated by Eastern E170s (14%) - coloured purple below
• 11 flights arrived 1 hour or more later than scheduled (13%) - highlighted yellow below
  • It's worth noting that the delays could be an Eastern issue, an issue with delays at LBA or AMS, an issue with enroute ATC delays, or weather at LBA/AMS/enroute.

Is there actually that much of a problem? Or is the fact that it’s only the flights hit with problems that are posted on here? If you compare KLM at LBA vs at other UK airports over the past months, there looks to be similar issues across the board, regardless if Eastern operated the flights or not.

 

[Jerry]

Looking at the facts:

Over the last 30 days there have been 90 departures (3x daily) scheduled for Eastern E190s. Of these 90 flights:

• 3 flights have been cancelled (3%)
• 2 flights have been operated by KLM (1x B737 and 1x E190) - coloured blue below
• 12 flights have been operated by Eastern E170s (14%) - coloured purple below
• 11 flights arrived 1 hour or more later than scheduled (13%) - highlighted yellow below
  • It's worth noting that the delays could be an Eastern issue, an issue with delays at LBA or AMS, an issue with enroute ATC delays, or weather at LBA/AMS/enroute.

View attachment 32567
Is there actually that much of a problem or is the fact that only the flights that are hit with problems are posted on here? If you compare KLM at LBA vs at other UK airports over the past months, there looks to be similar issues across the board, regardless if Eastern operated the flights or not.

Just to point out I'm at Dublin right now and my flight to Amsterdam is delayed by 20 minutes already. This is a mainline flight. KLMs operation is vast and complex so it doesn't take much to cause a delay.

 

[pug]

Great post Severn. All you have to do is look on the departures board at ANS and you’ll see that significant delays are frequent across their fleet and it’s not isolated to Eastern.

I’m not trying to suggest that none of the delays have been of Easterns making, I’m sure there are still issues with crewing, technical issues etc… But the majority of the problems stem from AMS being slot constrained and any delays have significant knock on. They will of course always prioritise the bigger stuff.

Not sure if it’s gotten any worse or whether people are just noticing it more now.

 

[Scottie Dog]

Just as an aside, my sister was flying out from Manchester (sorry to use foul language) on last Sunday. The Amsterdam sector - KL1032 - was 2 hours late due to a technical issue on the inbound ex-AMS and so she missed the connection to YVR.
KLM put her, and her husband up in the Corendon hotel at the airport (the hotel with a B743 outside your bedroom window in the car park!) with dinner, wine and breakfast having booked them on the following day's flight.
Great customer service and a couple of satisfied passengers.
PS - before you ask, I don't know how many glasses/bottles of wine were included.

 

[Len Fish]

We all have our views about the current situation but which ever way you spin it it’s what the fare paying passengers think and their perception of the service that will make or break the success or otherwise of Eastern taking over. Most will not be particularly interested in
what caused any delay, all they are worried about is the consequent effect on their plans. I would suggest that a delay longer than the actual flight time is not a good look whichever way you look at it.

 

[White Heather]

Looking at the facts:

Over the last 30 days there have been 90 departures (3x daily) scheduled for Eastern E190s. Of these 90 flights:

• 3 flights have been cancelled (3%)
• 2 flights have been operated by KLM (1x B737 and 1x E190) - coloured blue below
• 12 flights have been operated by Eastern E170s (14%) - coloured purple below
• 11 flights arrived 1 hour or more later than scheduled (13%) - highlighted yellow below
  • It's worth noting that the delays could be an Eastern issue, an issue with delays at LBA or AMS, an issue with enroute ATC delays, or weather at LBA/AMS/enroute.

View attachment 32567
Is there actually that much of a problem? Or is the fact that it’s only the flights hit with problems that are posted on here? If you compare KLM at LBA vs at other UK airports over the past months, there looks to be similar issues across the board, regardless if Eastern operated the flights or not.

That does indicate though that 30% of flights are either late, switched to a smaller aircraft, or cancelled. That's not exactly reassuring if you're booking a long haul connection at AMS . An almost 1 in 3 chance that things may not go to plan.

The reality is though that the route has been becoming increasingly unreliable for a good while, and not just because if Eastern taking over. Certainly my frustration comes from the fact the LBA route could, and probably should, be carrying far more passengers on at least E190s and on some flights, a 737. The demand is there. KLM have slowly chopped away at our frequency and reliability with the result thst passenger figures are not what they should be.

As for Eastern acquiring 2 more E190s, that's great, provided they have the crews to fly them. At the weekend we were told they didn't. And that our based E190 was positioning to MAN to fly one of their services instead. @pug has said several times they're struggling to recruit E jet crews, so if they can end up short staffed now, with what they have, the additional airframes won't help unless they have the crews too.

It's frustrating that a route that used to be so important at LBA, and our busiest , seems to be slowly diminishing .

 

[pug]

That does indicate though that 30% of flights are either late, switched to a smaller aircraft, or cancelled. That's not exactly reassuring if you're booking a long haul connection at AMS . An almost 1 in 3 chance that things may not go to plan.

The reality is though that the route has been becoming increasingly unreliable for a good while, and not just because if Eastern taking over. Certainly my frustration comes from the fact the LBA route could, and probably should, be carrying far more passengers on at least E190s and on some flights, a 737. The demand is there. KLM have slowly chopped away at our frequency and reliability with the result thst passenger figures are not what they should be.

As for Eastern acquiring 2 more E190s, that's great, provided they have the crews to fly them. At the weekend we were told they didn't. And that our based E190 was positioning to MAN to fly one of their services instead. @pug has said several times they're struggling to recruit E jet crews, so if they can end up short staffed now, with what they have, the additional airframes won't help unless they have the crews too.

It's frustrating that a route that used to be so important at LBA, and our busiest , seems to be slowly diminishing .

Don’t mean to be picky but it’s not so much that they’re struggling to recruit as struggling to train. They will always be able to find people wanting to work there, but there aren’t many type rated Ejet pilots around so you have to train them up which as I’m sure you can imagine takes time and it’s why I understand Eastern have refused to take on extra routes.

The delays are typical at AMS I believe. It’s not helped that the airport is artificially contained by slots. All you have to do is look at the departures boards on a given day. I scanned through yesterday and there were numerous 738 and E-2 delays going into hours. Is it a shame? Yes! Would I still book knowing this? Absolutely because I’ve found KLM look after you and because if I can get there by connecting at AMS without driving to LHR/LGW then it makes the 20 minute journey to/from the airport a no brainer.

 

[Finger66]

Whatever the reasons, the situation is not acceptable for what is supposed to be a high profile connecting route on a high profile carrier - and I am referring to KLM when I say that.
If KLM themselves are in such a mess then frequency should be cut on routes with the highest frequency to help with resilience which in turn helps with delays and slot constraints at AMS. 3 flights a day for wave connections seems to, or did seem to, work. Utilise larger aircraft on a reduced frequency at those times because clearly what is currently happening isn't working across a large part of their network

 

[pug]

Whatever the reasons, the situation is not acceptable for what is supposed to be a high profile connecting route on a high profile carrier - and I am referring to KLM when I say that.
If KLM themselves are in such a mess then frequency should be cut on routes with the highest frequency to help with resilience which in turn helps with delays and slot constraints at AMS. 3 flights a day for wave connections seems to, or did seem to, work. Utilise larger aircraft on a reduced frequency at those times because clearly what is currently happening isn't working across a large part of their network

It’s not as simple as that, and they’ll prioritise where they see fit. I think the fact that they’ve put T3 onto the network shows they’re committed to the services and maintaining that flexibility. If people are booking with connections any less than 3 hours then really that’s their issue.

I know exactly what you mean but just cutting capacity across the board clearly isn’t going to work for them and hence they’re not doing it. I think we all hope it regains some stability but there really isn’t much of an alternative for most regional airports in the U.K. and I include LBA in that.

 

[Jerry]

As this is the KLM delay forum just to show this is the departure board live from gate D6

then frequency should be cut on routes with the highest frequency

Problem there is that they tend to be the bigger markets where the competition is. More likely they'd cut frequency at smaller airports like LBA.

 

[Len Fish]

I know that’s only a snapshot but pretty damning for the Eastern flights.

 

[Finger66]

As this is the KLM delay forum just to show this is the departure board live from gate D6


Problem there is that they tend to be the bigger markets where the competition is. More likely they'd cut frequency at smaller airports like LBA.

And that's exactly why LBA need U2 to jump on the route so they don't have it to themselves

 

[KARFA]

i think for those of us who do travel a lot we are fully aware AMS can and does have delays - often due to weather due to the ridiculous restrictions on runway usage. however it is clear eastern are adding to this with tech and crew issues on the LBA route which is making the situation much worse. constant reliability issues is the kind of thing that drives repeat customers away.

having said that, i assume KLM have their own resource issues atm which meant that the choice was to wet lease for some routes or just cut flights. i doubt KLM are happy with the performance of eastern - but considering the deserved reputation eastern have it is hardly a surprise.

 

[Jerry]

And that's exactly why LBA need U2 to jump on the route so they don't have it to themselves

Easyjet would be offering some different though to what KLM offer onward seamless connectivity.

I know that’s only a snapshot but pretty damning for the Eastern flights.

True considering all 3 Eastern flights are delayed assuming they are being operated by them.

 

[LBAYORKIE]

It’s not as simple as that, and they’ll prioritise where they see fit. I think the fact that they’ve put T3 onto the network shows they’re committed to the services and maintaining that flexibility. If people are booking with connections any less than 3 hours then really that’s their issue.

I know exactly what you mean but just cutting capacity across the board clearly isn’t going to work for them and hence they’re not doing it. I think we all hope it regains some stability but there really isn’t much of an alternative for most regional airports in the U.K. and I include LBA in that.

I believe KLM recommend a minimum of fifty minutes for connections, forty for Schengen. Three hours is far too much.

 

[Finger66]

Easyjet would be offering some different though to what KLM offer onward seamless connectivity.

Yes they would but that's when it's up to KLM to start protecting their P2P share by upping their own game. Already been said competition helps.
And I think we can all agree, regardless of any reasons behind it, things are far from seamless where KLM are concerned right now.
And I will say this again, regardless of the reasons the current situation is unacceptable and needs addressing.

 

[pug]

I believe KLM recommend a minimum of fifty minutes for connections, forty for Schengen. Three hours is far too much.

I would suggest that is irresponsible depending on the onward destination. I connected a few months ago, supposed to have a 2 hour transfer on my way back, ended up having 50 minutes and had to make a run for it under threat of spending a night in an airport hotel. Made it with minutes to spare. It was a KLM mainline flight which caused the delay, Eastern were on time.