The KLM experience - Act 2

I hate flying KLM. There is simply no other way to put it. I’ve flown them 5 or 6 times in the past few weeks, their airplanes suck, business class is a joke, and every single flight was at least 45 minutes late. I’m writing this post from Schiphol airport (yes, it sounds like something else) and I’m sitting here at baggage claim number 5 for over 45 minutes. 45 minutes! To get my bag from the gate to the caroussel. They got to be kidding. It took me as long to fly from Hamburg to Amsterdam in the first place! Not including the one hour delay taking off because of rain and Amsterdam. Rain. Not an earthquake. Not a tornado. Not a civil war. Rain.

So here I am, instead of attending a session on Indigo at the Microsoft TechEd event, I’m watching a monitor that updates the planned arrival of our bags every 15 minutes. Shortly before the allotted time the baggage handling folks delay the arrival time by adding another 20 minutes. When I arrived at the belt shortly before 2pm, it already said 14:15, which was fairly unreasonable since we had used a tiny Fokker 100, not a 747. Anyway, at 14:15 they switch the time to 14:35. At 14:40 still no bags, but the monitor says 14:55. I raise hell at the counter and all I get as a response is “we can’t help you, the bags will arrive when they arrive.” I hate flying KLM and I hate Schiphol. Forever, they had a reputation for being grossly inefficient and very sloppy with baggage. Today is another proof. According to another passenger, our container with about 8 bags was apparently put into the transit area instead of arrivals, and now somebody (hopefully) is trying to trace them. Typical for Schiphol. If I can help it this was the last time I came here.

Update: My bag is lost. They don’t know where it is.