[Anonymous]

[business traveller]

I travelled with KLM from Amsterdam Schiphol to London Heathrow Terminal 4 in late February 2016 in economy class on a Fokker 70 aircraft. This was a connecting flight from Prague, which I have reviewed separately.

Prior to departure we used the KLM Crown Lounge in the non-Schengen area. It was a relatively long walk from our arrival gate and as it was a Schengen to non-Schengen transfer it involved going through passport control (albeit there was one person in front of us in the EU queue and we were through in a matter of seconds).

I'd never used the non-Schengen KLM lounge before, but was quite struck by its size. However, a large part of the lounge was roped off and was out of use. The lounge seemed very busy on arrival, but that was largely because most people had congregated towards the seats nearest the entrance – there was plenty of space further back. The furniture was modern and I particularly liked the mural/wall of a departing KLM 747 along one of the walls. The lounge wi-fi worked well. There was a limited selection of newspapers but I did manage to find copies of both The Telegraph and The Financial Times. We made a quick visit to the resting/sleeping area out of interest and was struck by how busy, noisy (loud snoring inside) and smelly it was and quickly left.

In terms of food, the hot options comprised meatballs with Bami Goreng with egg (which was tasty and quite hot when some of the accompanying chilli sauce was added) or two different types of soup (I tried the tomato soup with croutons and a crusty bread roll; which was flavoursome). I did find it slightly odd that given the size of the lounge, the hot food was served from a single hatch in a corner where, at least at the time I was there, quite a long queue had formed. There was also a selection of salads, tuna, hummus etc.

At several spots in the lounge, there was plenty of snack food including cheese, crackers and nuts etc – overall the food available seemed to be a tastier and more adventurous spread than the food m in the Heathrow T5 British Airways lounges.

There was m a good selection of drinks including beers, wines and spirits as well as fruit juices and soda fountains. I enjoyed several glasses of cremant and was made a Grand Marnier based cocktail using a recipe on the Grand Marnier website and using ingredients from the lounge. At about 6:10pm we left the lounge and headed to the gate, which was quite a long walk.

Departure was from gate D6-C, which is designed for aircraft on remote stands. We travelled on the last bus which only had a few other passengers onboard and left the gate at 18:35, arriving at the aircraft less than 5 minutes later. The door of the bus arrived very close to the aircraft steps and I was onboard in a matter of seconds. There was a warm welcome onboard and I was asked if I was heading home (which I was!). The Fokker 70 is a small plane. There are three seats on one side of the aisle and two on the other. We were in seats 9A and 9C, which are standard economy seats but are well aligned with windows and overlook only the front part of the wing so still have good visibility. Despite the aircraft being quite old it seemed well maintained – the seats were slimline and upholstered in a smart dark blue leather with a lighter blue leather headrest. The aircraft has small overhead baggage bins and the bin above our seats was already full when we arrived. In a first for me, one of my bags (which contained a valuable vase) had to be tightly strapped into a business class seat with a seatbelt due to the lack of overhead space – quite ironically, the vase traveled in more style to London than I did! Our small trolley case managed to fit in an overhead bin nearer the front. Take-off was finally at almost 7pm exactly and there were amazing views of the Netherlands on our ascent. The Fokker 70 is quite noisy, in particular, during take-off.

At about 7:10pm a trolley service brought round a falafel wrap and a small carton of water in a blue Delft box. The usual drinks service was available. I had another glass of water along with a small bottle of white wine (The Elements – a South African wine which was a blend of Sauvignon Blanc and Chardonnay), which was decent. The wrap was tasty. The rest of the flight was otherwise uneventful. At around 19:40 the co-pilot made an announcement to say that whilst we had commenced our descent we would be in a holding pattern for the next 8 minutes, he expected us to be on the ground at around 20:00 (7pm UK time) and said there would be a 10 minute taxi to our stand at Terminal 4.

In the end, landing was just after 7pm. There was a relatively long taxi and a period of several minutes of being stationary during which the plane started to smell strongly of jet fuel. The stationary period was a good opportunity to plane spot on the nearby departing runway where Kenya Airways, ANA, LOT and Polish Airlines aircraft were leaving.

After arriving on stand at Terminal 4 there was a relatively long walk to passport control and a 10 minute wait. My suitcase was already on carousel 7A when we arrived at 19:35.

In summary, this was another strong KLM flight. I'm always impressed at full service on flights less than an hour. I'd never travelled on a Fokker 70 before and whilst I'm surprised it's still being used on the Heathrow route, it is a comfortable and interesting plane to travel in. It's almost a shame it will be retired by KLM in the near future.

Review courtesy of Seatplans.com. Original review by user Aspirational Flyer can be found here

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