A combination of carry over leave from last year and time off in lieu resulted in me heading to Tokyo early in the new year to go to the 2024 Tokyo Auto Salon. My trip was due to be 10 days in total.
2 days before I was due to travel back I managed to badly sprain my ankle. When the online check in opened I paid £40 to move to an “upfront” seat in economy. These are located towards the front of the economy cabin on KLM just behind the economy comfort section. Economy comfort is a standard economy seat with more legroom. The upfront seat was showing as being an empty row of 3 compared to the full row of 3 I was in further back and I felt that with the ankle injury this would be beneficial.
Later on in the evening of the day before I was due to return I checked the KLM app to see a delay of 2hrs to the NRT-AMS flight. No problem as I should still have 1.5hrs connection time at AMS to get the last flight of the night to GLA. A quick check of FR24 showed that there had been an aircraft change from 777-200 to the 787-9. KLM have proper premium economy installed on their 787-9 and I therefore checked the KLM app to see if they were selling upgrades on the app. For a fee of £190 I was able to upgrade to premium economy, which would definitely be worth it with the ankle injury.
Next morning I took a taxi from my hotel to Tokyo Station to get the Narita Express to NRT. On arrival at NRT I went to the AF/KLM desks to drop my suitcase and was given a ¥1500 voucher to get something to eat due to the delay. The Estimated departure was showing as 14:30 with the inbound aircraft due around 12:40.
The flight boarded for the revised departure time of 14:30 and then we sat for a further hour while a paperwork issue was resolved. This would reduce the connection time in AMS to around the minimum connection time. When we pushed back the flight crew did their announcements and advised the flight time would be 14:10. Once airborne the ETA for AMS was showing as 22:10, 40 mins after the GLA flight was due to depart.
Using the inflight wi-fi, I could see from the KLM app that I was being rebooked and had a choice of flights for the next day to choose from. As severe storms were forecast for both GLA and AMS for the Sunday I chose the first flight out of AMS on the Sunday morning.
One thing of note about the flight was KLM managed to provide full premium economy service and catering despite the aircraft normally used on that route not having that class of service.
On arrival at AMS, KLM staff directed me to a self service Kiosk where I was able to within 1 min get hotel vouchers for the Park Inn by Raddison.
It was 23:30 by time I got to my hotel room and had to be up by 06:30 to get back to the airport.
On arrival back at the airport, KLM gave me a further €15 voucher to get food.
I also applied for EU/UK 261 compensation for the delay and overnight in AMS. KLM offer you the choice of taking the cash amount specified by the regulations for the length of flight and delay, €600 in this case, or a higher amount, €800 to take a voucher that can be used on AF/KL/DL or VS. I opted for the voucher.
I was impressed with smooth the process was with KLM dealing with the delay, getting rebooked and then getting a hotel on arrival in AMS.
KLM: NRT-AMS-GLA when things go wrong
Re: KLM: NRT-AMS-GLA when things go wrong
Good for you. It’s annoying regards disruption but it’s the way it’s dealt with which makes all the difference and it seems that AFKL were well on top of it.