Just back from second trip - flying from London choice is limited so had to choose KLM again.

Usual a)chaos on boarding in Amsterdam - KLM apparently unable to do what other airlines do and stagger boarding according to seat numbers
b) some of the poorest inflight food around - and surly cabin staff (on way out). To be fair gem of a stewardess on way back.
c) Beaten up old MD11 aircraft
d) Lost our luggage in Amsterdam - only one piece mind but that had all our clothes in, despite a 2 and a half our stop over. the KLM flite from Amsterdam to London was over booked so we reckon thet deliberately bumped off one piece of luggage. Very unhelpful KLM staff at Heathrow, neglected to give us reference number for lost luggage, delivered 24 hours later.

Last year KLM returned us a day late (due to fault on all weather landing equipment of aircraft) had to divert to Brussels.

We travle extensively and KLM in our opinion is probably the worst we have flown with.

You obviously have never flown American Airlines

Andrew, can you not take Air Jamaica?

Ain't that the truth Wally!

Seb - thanks for the input; you mean fly Air Jamaica to Kingston from London and then change to do the last hop? Have you ever done it that way? Thanks for suggestion will check.

Re: American Airlines - yep guess we all have our favorite worst airlines - and no I havent.

Air Jamaica flys Heathrow to Montego Bay ..
arrives and leaves Montego Bay around Midnight (at least they did this year, don' t know about next year) which means for you when coming to Bonaire your need to overnight ... going home is ok, your arrive around 6 pm at Montego Bay

I've never flown it andrew, I just was aware it was one of their routes. Sometimes the upper class on Air Jamaica is not a whole lot more than coach, I don't know how long a flight it would be for you, seems worth a look though.

I would check through the Air jamaica website, it looks as if a lot of their service is KLM codeshare, but some flights are AJ

Sorry, I forgot to mention it ... no code share .. when you look up Bonaire-London on the Air Jamaica web site, only KLM flights Amsterdam Bonaire show up with the connection to London... you have to look up the London - Montego Bay leg and than the leg Montego Bay - Bonaire . It is one of these times you better use a (Air Jamaica) travel agent ....

As much I'm reluctant to it, I'd have to say that Air Jamaica provides the "Best" service to Bonaire, and it is not because the airline is that good, is just because the other serving airlines are THAT bad. Air Jamaica has one of the WORST boarding systems (alright, start boarding... Calling rows? Nah! That's too orderly, we need chaos!) I wish Continental flew there. Oh well! On their defense though, I'd have to say the Air Jamaica ranks high as far as airline food goes. Coach Izzy

Izzy - KLM do exactly the same; OK everyone ready? Right on you go.......and the devil take the hindmost. Total chaos - and thats not great when its 11.45pm at Schipol.

I am of the opinion that airlines which do not have a boarding by seats system are under the thrall of their staff - its basically 'to much work'. Efficient well run airlines just make their staff get on with it.

AJ calls their service "Lovebird" service. Guess that's because you're going to be REALLY cozy with your surrounding passengers. I don't know if they set a record for most passenger seats in an A320, but they certainly have them packed in.

From Boston to Bonaire and back for our trip across New Years, the service was OK. Not outstanding. US Immigration Service made AJ look positively stellar (Immigration had only a handful of people on duty it seemed like, and several international flights were all coming in together).

My trip down in June on AA and Divi was a lot better, IMO. AA's jets are well maintained, and there's enough room between seats to at least not arrive totally knotted up with cramps. The Divi flight was, ummm, interesting (very strong winds from the east, very small plane, much meditation to keep calm).

I sure hope someone eventually decides to service Bonaire daily with an A319 or 737-800.

I'm afraid my wife and I regard US immigration as the lowest of the low - the majority of 'developing' countries I visit do it far better and with at least some courtesy. We wont now fly via the US to avoid contact with them - because 2 years ago the US immigration etc managed to turn a 2.30hour change over from Cozamel to Europe into a seconds to go dash to get the connection. Rude, ignorant and jobsworth - there are often letters of complaint in the UK travel press of folk being mucked around and I know of others who avoid flying via the US on this basis (and before anyone says, yes I know there is heightened security etc etc, but there are ways of doing things etc)

Completely agree with you, Andrew! It was our first time in the US, this year, boy where they rude! Our trip back home was very exciting, we flew from Miami, via St. Maarten and Curacao back to Amsterdam (yes, it was a little long, but saved us 400 Euro per person, this way!)
The customs at Miami where so rude! They made a complete mess of the checks, threw all of our stuff (incl our shoes) in some baskets, really everything was upside down. We where 5, I had all passports and boarding cards together, someone jerked it out of my hands. Later someone else asked me where my passport was: I had no idea, so responded: "somewhere, don't know", as by that time I lost sight of almost all of my belongings. For in the meantime, they stopped the row, left 2 of our party standing in line, and helped some people not belonging to our party (all their stuff was lying around too). The officer asking about my passport wanted to open all the bags etc. to look for my passport, he thought I had it in there somewhere. So I explained to him that his colleague got it, and I didn't know where it was right then. Then I saw all our passports and boarding passes (off course all ripped out of their envelopes and messed up) lying on a table. I had to look while they searched through my handbag, but at the same time another officer asked me to turn around, for she wanted to search me. It was such a mess, they where so rude ("feet up!" what happened to 'please'?). It really spoiled my day, it was only early in the morning. Coming back to Amsterdam, since we had a flight via Cur, we had a 100% check. How different this was, although it took some time before we where all through, they where extremely friendly, apologized all the time, thanked us for our cooperation. We even got a form, with some explanation why this was necessary, again more apologies. Yep: there are ways of doing things!

Yes Karin - we were given the most extensive check I have ever received on arrival at Schipol - body search, X-ray cheque on hand luggage, sniffer dogs etc - I was told this was being done because of on-going problems with drug mules on the flite from Bonaire and Latin America. It was all done in a very professional and courteous manner, and it was all done quickly, with a large number of available customs men etc. No problem whatever. I dont know why the US authorities cant get this right, it just serves to antagonise foreigners (and the US needs all the friends it can get right now)

American Airlines staff, just as a generalization, are not very friendly. I saw a flight attendant being extremely argumentative to an older lady traveling alone, and it was very inappropriate. Alternatively, when we went to Vegas on Southwest, the airline flight crew were the Comedy Central of the Sky. We laughed our butts off at their antics, it was great. Only problem was no assigned seats, which I truly do not undertstand. Of course, I was with Steve though, so people move outta his way! LOL!

It seems with some airlines that particular crews are particularly good or particularly rude. As the cabin crew work as a team I guess the tone by which they deal with us is set by whoever is the chief that day. I have had/seen rude service at various times from most of the big airlines (British Airways/ KLM/Iberia/ most of the US ones) on any given day. As a generalisation we have experienced better service from the airlines serving the Far East/Oceania rather than the European/US ones. Certainly I think overall flight staff are less pleasant than they used to be - they may claim thats because the customers they deal with our less pleasant (air rage etc) but for me thats no excuse.

Andrew, our Southwest flight to Las Vegas started with "there might be 50 ways to leave your lover, but there are only 6 ways to exit this aircraft." And ended with, "if there is anything we can do to make your flight more enjoyable, please keep it to yourself". LOL In between was even a little bit of stand-up comedy, we were dying laughing.

The best airline I flew in recent years was TAM in Brazil. Great service and when you board the pilot is there to greet you.

The best flight in the U. S. was flying on AirTran and the pilot was Mad Dog Watson. We were waiting in the boarding area and he came on the PA system and system and thanked us for flying AirTran because he had a truck payment due and that he appreciated our support. On the flight he played the harmonica to entertain us and did keep us laughing.

American Airlines ground crews tend to be pretty rude with regularity. The exception is the staff in the Admirals Clubs.

When we flew American Eagle from SJU to BON a few years back, the flight crew were pretty decent. The cabin crew told us that there is no automatic oxygen on the ATR, but that they do have oxygen bottles "and in the event of an emergency would provide it to the highest bidder."

Andrew

This is our KLM day as we will be (hopefully) on the late flight tonight. If you try some other airlines - Air China, Air Egypt or Gulf Air your opinion may change. Our internal Air China flight was interesting as the plane was a copy of a Russian plane and of the four main tyres under the wings wings two were white (canvas no rubber) one was 50% black and white and the last was black but no tread. This was after a wheel change.

There is a noticeable difference with boarding between the Curacao and Bonaire flights from Amsterdam. The Curacao flight terminates there and most passengers understand english. The Bonaire flights terminate in Equador or Peru and carry a maximum of 50 passeners to Bonaire and most passengers do not understand english. This could explain the confusion with boarding.

I'm not sure I go with the language explanation. On the flight to Bonaire absolutely no attempt was made in either English or Spanish (nor Dutch as far as I could tell) to tell people to board by seat rows. Nor were there announcements about letting on young kids/the infirm on either. I have been on many flights were the majority getting on are not speakers of the carriers language (ie BA to Colombia, Alitalia to Italy) and it all comes down to whether the ground crew are prepared to make the announcements and police the line.

I'm not sure what went wrong on your flight Andrew. My wife and me did around 40 flights with KLM, and all flights leaving from major airports were boarded by row calling. And they normally start with the children, business class, elite members and then by rows.

We left Amsterdam on the 23:35 flight to BON this Saturday and they called to allow children on first. Then they allowed the business class & Gold/Platinum Elite passengers to board.

Then yes all the rest boarded the plane and within 20 to 30 mins we taxied out.

Great flight very smooth and no complaints as we got in early.

Live from Chat'N'Browse.

Well you folks were lucky then - or we were unlucky!

To follow up on Karin v. Veen comment
http://travel.telegraph.co.uk/travel/main.jhtml?xml=/travel/2004/09/25/etnewsus250904.xml

The same kind of complaints you can find in all European news papers.
The tourism from the UK to the US is so much down, that they send the adm. officer the article is about

wow, thank you for this link, Brigitte. Well, I can imagine that tourism to the US is down, our experience with customs surely coloured my view about the US.

Please don't paint us all bad. We have lots of nice people in the USA. With the terrorist attacks and the war in Iraq people here are afraid. Not a good way to live. Try to overlook our faults and come and enjoy the USA.

KLM - A Case Study in Poor Customer Service.

I traveled from Berlin to Amsterdam on KLM flight KL1835 on March 3, 2005. My luggage did not make it to Berlin. I filed a missing baggage complaint at Berlin airport (file reference number - TXLKL29005). From then on, I spent 8 days trying to trace my baggage. KLM customer service failed to respond for several days despite repeated emails. In Berlin, after much difficulty, I was able to get through to the KLM office via phone. They were neither helpful nor friendly and I did not get any information on my luggage. Finally, I was back home in Chicago with absolutely no information from KLM. I continued to write emails to KLM (getting through to them by phone is almost impossible). After repeated attempts, I get a call 9 days later on march 12 saying that they are not able to trace my luggage. I am appalled that it took so many days for KLM to make the first courtesy call to let me know that they cannot find my luggage. The least they could have done is to call me within 24-48 hours of the incident and admit that my luggage cannot be traced and that I should make alternate arrangements. I would not have completely understood the situation.

I am a frequent business traveler and KLM has been my worst experience. Further, KLM customer service is extremely poor and unresponsive. My recommendation to anyone who wishes to fly KLM is to be cautious about what to expect from the airline.

I still do not know the whereabouts of my luggage. Some important material is missing and KLM continues to evade my queries...