L'espace affaires

Yesterday I headed back home for NYC permanently.

I was very excited, as I had booked a business class one way award ticket on KLM. I have a special love affair with KLM, mostly because in my experience, they have always been very efficient (and of course, there was that time when the flight attendant offered me bread then doubled back 5 minutes later to apologize profusely about it when he realized that I had a gluten-free meal).

My original itinerary was a 14h25 departure on an AF/KLM codeshare flight (on AF metal) to Amsterdam and then an 18h10 departure from AMS to JFK. I have always been curious about KLM biz class - this is because I have always found the coach service on KLM to be quite good, compared with AF and UA (whereas, which is quite normal, AF and UA biz are really quite excellent). So, for me, it was an opportunity to: a) connect in Schiphol airport, which I quite like because ground staff are very helpful and I think it's very cute that they have a tulip shop, a casino, and a mini Rijksmuseum in the terminal; b) check out the KLM lounge in AMS to see if it is really as good as people say it is; and c) see if KLM biz is worth its price (because I flew Alitalia biz not too long ago and all I can say is that it is SOOOO not worth the price of the ticket).

So I was obviously VERY upset when the H and I arrived at terminal 2F only to be greeted with the departures board that said "KLM 1234 delayed until 17h55". Argh! Then H and I went past the L'Espace Affaires check-in desk and had to double back and walk another 10 minutes back, where there was a short line, but a long wait, as there was for some reason only 1 gate agent checking people in. Finally, it was my turn, and I had the misfortune to get someone who was obviously very new to her job, given how she panicked when she saw that I was headed to AMS (she kept turning to the gate agent next to her and asking her what she was supposed to do). Turned out that AF decided to rebook me onto a direct flight, CDG-JFK, because there were terrible storms in Amsterdam, so many flights headed in and out of Schiphol were being cancelled or delayed, and AF did not want to take the chance of my JFK flight getting cancelled and me being put into a hotel at their expense. So the GA left us standing there for a good 20 minutes as a huge pile of people started gathering in line behind us, and came back with my ticket. "But," I protested, "this means that my gluten free meal will not be on board!" The GA then started calling all over the place to see if she could secure me a gluten free meal for the 15h55 flight to JFK (mind you, it was 12h30 at this point) and finally said that it was not possible, as she was unable to get in touch with Servair (the caterers). She then checked me in and then directed me to terminal 2E, with her apologies (and as a side note, she was shocked that the CDG-JFK flight was 8 hours, 25 minutes - she was all, "For real? I thought the flight was 6 hours!" and I had to point out that when flying west, you go against the air currents, so it takes longer). At this point, I was convinced that this was an AF conspiracy to keep me from reuniting with my true love, KLM, and made a nasty speech to the GA, the gist of which was "I know this is totally not YOUR fault and you have nothing to do with it, but frankly, I loathe AF and I love KLM."

So, alas, while I was miffed about the whole thing, it wasn't such a bad journey home. The GA had assigned me one of the best seats on the plane (an A-340), in 2B, which meant I had no one in front of me. Also I found that the plane had been reconfigured with the new L'Espace Affaires seats, which were more or less lie flat (that is, they are lie flat, but at a weird angle, so one has a tendency to slide down your seat until your feet block you when they run up against the seat or the wall in front of you). Also, I was pleasantly surprised by the helpfulness of the AF staff when I boarded and explained the meal problem - they told me not to hesitate to ask any questions, and then even took me to the galley and showed me all the dishes so I could have first pick of what I could eat (I went with the fish, steamed veggies, and rice, which barely had a hint of a vinagrette sauce; although the beef and pommes de terres dauphin had no sauce at all, I thought the potatoes were a little dodgy, as potatoes dauphin have melted cheese and sometimes have some sort of cream sauce). As usual, I didn't really sleep on the plane, but dozed for an hour. The flight was completely booked - literally, every seat on the plane was taken, but I later found out this was because an earlier AMS-JFK flight had been canceled and they had rerouted a bunch of those people to Paris and put them on our flight - which had obviously resulted in a bunch of op-ups for some of those passengers - and they were pretty evident because they kept taking pictures of themselves stretched out on the lie-flat seats and eating their meals - so the camera flashes were a little irritating. (Also, I think some guy who was supposed to be in biz got downgraded to coach, and he was understandably very upset about it, especially when the flight crew were all "Um, we can't do anything about it. Maybe you should write a complaint letter to AF management?")

Arriving at JFK, I was even more surprised when my priority-tagged luggage actually came out before everyone else's - this is actually the first time this has ever happened to me when flying AF!

All in all, it was a good flight back home, and left me with a good memory of AF (to replace all those crappy ones). I'd also definitely recommend shelling out the $$$ for AF business if you can - definitely much better than Alitalia biz, and so long as there are no irregular ops. The food is not as good as it used to be, but the new seats make up for it all.

Now that I'm back in the US for good, the process of job hunting and a new life begins...