Weathering the storm with KLM

I was scheduled to fly back to the U.S. last Thursday, but the big storm that swept most of Europe delayed my return by a day, and I was stuck in Amsterdam for a night.

The flight out of Bremen was delayed by an hour, and by the time we finally reached Amsterdam, the winds were so strong that our little Fokker 50 was no longer up to the challenge of landing, and the pilot broke off the landing attempt at the last minute. After some deliberation with air traffic control and many more minutes of flying, we finally landed in Eindhoven, but not before half the passengers had thrown up the tasty cheese sandwiches we had eaten earlier. It was a really rough flight.

From Eindhoven we took a bus to Amsterdam, which we reached at about 10pm, ten hours behind schedule. Even the bus ride was fairly rough, and we passed several trucks that had been blown over by the wind and were lying by the side of the highway.

Nobody was available to greet us in Amsterdam, so I went to the KLM ticket counter, where I was told to go away because there were no more flights to the U.S. that night, and I was therefore not a high-priority case. They were trying to get as many people onto flights that day as possible, so no time for me. That's probably why the ticket counter was so heavily staffed. I was to call the reservation number and find myself a hotel, which I was to pay for myself because KLM has no control over the weather. All this from a very unpleasant guy with a very unpleasant attitude.

So I tried to call the reservations number—all the hotels were long booked anyway, so I did not even bother trying to find a place to stay the night—but after wasting five euros on hold (not even a toll free number!), I decided to go back to the ticket counter, the fascist was gone, and I just got in line. Finally one of the agents re-booked me onto the first flight to MSP on Friday morning.

The rest of the night I spent having dinner at Burger King (the only food place still open) and a couple of beers at a pub. With that in my belly, I tried to find a bench to sleep for a few hours. It turns out, though, that the benches in Schipol Airport are not benches at all, but rather single seats that are separated by armrests, which makes them pretty much useless for sleeping, so by 5am I had had enough and tried to check in.

From there things picked up a bit. At first my e-ticket was not working, so I had to wait in line for about 1/2 hour, then spend another half hour with a very lovely ticket agent, who couldn't get the e-ticket to work and finally walked across the airport with me to get a paper ticket. So much for 21st century technology. Well, it all worked out in the end, though, and I got to go through the passport control and have a nice, long breakfast before boarding the flight home without further incidents.

The flight back was fine, the entertainment systems in the new Airbus A330's are really quite nice, and because many travelers apparently had not yet made it to Amsterdam, the flight was almost empty. It took a little longer than usual because we still had over 200 mph headwinds for a while, but as a result we went farther north than usual, and got a nice look at Greenland and its disappearing glaciers.

In the end I made it safely to Minneapolis and the weather was certainly not KLM's fault. But they could have tried to be nice instead of adding insult to injury; they simply chose not to. They could have allowed me to change my flights in Bremen (which I tried) without asking for a rebooking fee. They could have fully staffed their ticket counters. They could have never hired the rude fascist. They could have had phones for people to call their reservation system. They could have provided some snacks and drink, even just water. They could have tried to help people find a place to stay for the night. They could have had fully functioning e-tickets. All of this would have been easy and inexpensive for them, but instead they simply blocked off and only pointed to the rules that said they were not responsible for any of this. Which they weren't. But they didn't have to be bastards about it.

I think next time I will fly Lufthansa.