Talking about the connections to Bonaire,

A friend of mine took this picture yesterday of three big blue KLM-birds together on Bonaire, good connections with europe, isn't it?

Picture taken by Cliff.


I also would like to react on the new travel restriction items.

Finally there is some justice in the weight-allowance. Europeans are used to a maximum weight of 20kgs per person (mind you per person, not per bag), as you were spoiled with 70lbs per bag, which means 140lbs per person, about 70kgs per person!

And this allowance in connection with the fact that the average US-person is more heavy than the European, and the flight-tariffs are on average cheaper from the US than from Europe....(also per mile!)
So finally some justice in this field.....

(there is some truth in this remark, but also some joke).

Harrie

So, justice is that Americans now get less service for more money, like the Europeans have been suffering with all along? :-)

Not sure who that is justice for though - certainly not consumers!

The three KLM plane thing was interesting. Apparently one of the planes needed to closely follow the other to take advantage of the lead plane's weather system monitoring. They tried to do it the day before with the flight tailing a KLM plane from Aruba to Amsterdam, but then couldn't start the plane on Bonaire in time. It delayed some folks for a day.

Jake

You can request up to 15k more luggage allowance for your dive gear if you do it in advance, at the time of booking is usually best. KLM do not make it easy and have tried to charge me 40 euros per person per leg but back down if the gear is in your ordinary luggage.

Of course, Jake,

it would have been better for all of us if you would have kept your allowance, and we would have been allowed to bring more in on our flights, as the US-people did already.
But on the other hand, it appears not to be so easy to make reliable profit on airflights, as you see how many airline-companies are in financial problems.... So it is understandable that they try to make more services paid extra for.

And it is also right that you can get an extra allowance for dive-gear, (of I thought 10kg), but not all the stuff that I call dive-gear (electronics and so on) was accepted as dive-gear, and I had to pay extra.
I am not a diver, you know, so I didn't have any dive-gear, but just wanted to get those extra 10 kgs.......

The payment for extra kgs is a shame, by the way, I think I paid €35,-- per kg! And they are very accurate on the weight of your bags, years ago an 20 - 30% overweight wasn't a problem, but they got new instructions, 1kg overweight has to be paid for already.
I put the heavy stuff normally in my cabin-luggage, (officially allowed another 10kgs)and I have trained to walk with the bag in such a way that it looks very light-weighted. But sometimes they take the bag away from me at the gate, and put it down-under, but up to now I have never had to pay extra for that overweight.

Harrie

I have a copy of a letter from KLM stating that people travelling from Europe to any of the Dutch islands with dive gear can have an additional 10Kg of baggage each. Each time we are told we are over we wave the letter and we are allowed to continue with no charge. This works on the UK to Amsterdam flight as well. If you want a copy let me know.

Brian, last year the Dive allowance was brought back to only 5 KG...

They gave me 10kg per person yesterday!

I feel discriminated...

Maybe in Holland they have different rules...

I sometimes think that different employees have a different set of rules at KLM! They always try to charge me for something so I always felt I was discriminated against because I was from the UK.

uh..this is a bit disconcerting...

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quote:

The three KLM plane thing was interesting. Apparently one of the planes needed to closely follow the other to take advantage of the lead plane's weather system monitoring. They tried to do it the day before with the flight tailing a KLM plane from Aruba to Amsterdam, but then couldn't start the plane on Bonaire in time. It delayed some folks for a day.

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Oh, I forgot to tell that until one year ago, the allowance on tickets booked on the Antilles was 35 kgs, (while the same tickets on the same flight booked in the netherlands just was 20 kgs.) But now it is also only 20 kgs on KLM-flights, independent from the place where the journey started.

Harrie

Oh the price of freedom...
Hi Harrie long time no see

Hi Wally & Eva,

Yes, I have waves of activity on BT, in times I am really concerned about the future of Bonaire, you can see me here more often.

Hope to see you on Bonaire soon again!

Harrie

24 Mar to 03 Ap old sport....beer at bongos?

Well Wally & Eva,

Bongo's isn't what it was before, at least not on friday-evenings anymore, but feel free to have a dive at Small Wall, and a drink from my place, after 29 March.

Harrie

Sounds good...never dove small wall

just wanted to say: great pictures regardless of the discussion above, that's a funny thing to see on that small airport.