Air France-KLM study trip St Maarten

Jeg var så heldig at blive inviteret på studietur med Air France og KLM. Ud over at det altid er skønt at komme ud og opleve de flyselskaber vi sælger mange billetter på, var vi så heldige at vores 2-dages tur, som fandt sted den sidste -meget kolde- uge i januar, gik til St Maarten, hvor 26 behagelige varmegrader lokkede.

PS - for the record: nej, folk på rejsebureauer inviteres ikke ustandseligt med på den slags ture. Så du behøver ikke at dø af misundelse :-)

Du kan gå ind på bloggens hovedside og bare læse indlæggene ud i et (de kommer lige nedenunder), eller du kan klikke på linkene herunder. 

Tak til Air France og KLM for en meget spændende og informativ tur!

The last week in January, I was one of the fortunate participants on a 2-day study trip, hosted by Air France and KLM. Our destination was sunny St Maarten - a bit far to travel when you actually have less than 48 hours on the ground, some would say, but it was perfectly pleasant.

You can either scroll down and read the blog posts below - or you can click one of the links.

Merci & dank u well to Air France and KLM for a very exciting and informative trip!


Our outbound flight Paris CDG-St Maarten on Air France

Our return flight St Maarten-Amsterdam on KLM

Changing flights at Paris CDG Terminal 2

... and pictures of planes at Airport Beach St Maarten - a haven for plane spotters :-)

Review: Air France Paris CDG-St Maarten Business Class

Last week, Air France-KLM invited a group of travel agents from various agencies on a short trip to St Maarten in the Dutch Antilles, and I was one of the fortunate ones who was asked to come. The purpose of the trip was to try out various aspects of the product - among other things the transfer process in Paris CDG, and the on-board product on both airlines.

This blog post is about the Paris-St Maarten flight. (the post on the return flight on KLM is here)

We were confirmed in Economy Class, but when the gate agent scanned my boarding pass, the machine went *beep*. That can mean a lot of things (in theory, it could mean "sorry, you're getting bumped from the flight") but on this case it was good news - they had upgraded me to Business Class. Yay!!

wheee, all excited :-)

The cabin has lie-flat seats in a "fixed shell" which of course means you're not leaning back into the space of the person sitting behind you, and it also gives a degree of privacy, so your seatmate won't notice it instantly if you happen to dribble a bit in your sleep...

I never really get around to using the inflight entertainment system much, but I did have a quick nose around to see what was on offer.  To be honest, I was not terribly impressed with the selection of movies - but I am not sure if that was because I don't pay much attention to new movies, or if they simply weren't to my taste.  There were a few new ones that I had heard about, and there seemed to be quite a lot of "old classics" that I didn't know.  They were grouped into themes as you can see (this is just a selection of the more recent movies that were on offer)

Had I not seen it twice already, I would definitely

have been tempted by The Intouchables. Or perhaps

The Great Gatsby (which I haven't seen but heard

great things about)

One thing that did surprise me a bit was the headphones. They seemed to me a bit "worn" and the amenity kit included a set of "muffs" for them - very hygienic, but somehow a less luxurious feeling.

Speaking of amenity kits: they contain the usual selection of socks, eye mask, ear plugs and tooth brush - and Air France gets top points for including a super moisturiser by Clarins.  I am such a sucker for well-known brands, and this one is really good.  Also, in the lavatories they have a full-size Clarins facial cleanser + skin tonic (PLUS cotton pads), so you can actually do a full cleanse-and-moisturise routine before you doze off. Interestingly, the cleanser went missing from one of the lavatories about half-way across the Atlantic, so I guess I am not the only one who likes Clarins ...

As we all know, in addition to a comfortable seat, the important thing about long-haul flights is the FOOD.

We were treated to the "standard" choice of orange juice or champagne as the flight was prepared for take-off.   There was also a small snack (and more champagne) before dinner, and hot face towels.

Entrée:

"Prawn and tomato terrine with lobster suce, duck and goose foie gras terrine, sautéed marinated cherry tomatoes, baby spinach"

 The prawn and tomato terrine (on the right) was not a favourite of mine - a bit bland, and it sort of fell to pieces every time my fork went near it.  But the salad was nothing short of amazing - airline salads can be a bit hit or miss, and this one was perfectly crisp and just the right mix of very interesting kinds of lettuce. No iceberg salad on Air France :-)  And then, the foie gras.... I know I'm getting on the wrong side of every animal rights activist, but OH MY GOD - it was good!  I could happily have eaten twice as much. Interesting mix of the duck and the goose, not too fatty actually, and especially the duck part was silky smooth. YUM!!

Main course:

Choice between "pan-seared leg of lamb with sage sauce, vegetable bâtonnets with olive oil and lemon, mashed potatoes with cumin seeds" - "snapper marianted in lemon and chili pepper, lemongrass cream sauce, creole-style sautéed zucchini, rice with lentils and chili pepper" - and "guinea hen with butternut squash and cèpe mushroom". The latter was a "special", created by 2013 winner of Bocuse d'Or Thibaut Ruggeri.

I chose the lamb, and was not disappointed.  It was "well done" (I prefer it slightly less done) but by no means dry. There was not a hint of "woolen sweater" as people will sometimes accuse lamb of, and the sauce was wonderfully rich.

Then came the cheeses: "petit chèvre, camembert, dried apricot". All quite good, but the bread was really dry - this surprised me, as Air France comes from the country of wonderful baguettes.

All in all, good food. Especially (sorry again) the foie gras.  And then the dessert - mea culpa: I fell asleep and didn't have any!!! It was chocolate cake and ice cream, and everyone said it was really good. Quelle disaster.

But I slept really well (good seat!) and when I woke up, we were here:

Before landing we were served a light meal of risotto with sweet potato, zucchini brunoise, and cream, plus organic yogurt and fruit salad.  My pictures are blurry because of a light turbulence, but the risotto was incredibly tasty.  Yum yum, again!

Overall verdict: extremely pleasant flight. Not terribly impressive inflight entertainment, but maybe that's just me. Great food, and generous servings of very good wine!  Very nice and friendly cabin staff. Brilliant products in amenity kits and lavatories :-)  And comfortable, sleep-inducing seat .....

And then we arrived at St Maarten, and the weather looked like this:

- a very welcome change from the snow and ice we had left behind in Denmark :-)

Review: KLM St Maarten-Amsterdam Business Class

This blog post is about our return trip from St Maarten. You can see the review of the outbound trip on Air France here.

The return trip was confirmed in Business Class on a Boeing 747 which had been refitted with KLM's new Business Class seat, so we already knew we were in for a treat.  Nearly all the 747's have the new seats, and as of April 2014 they start refitting the Boeing 777 fleet.  I have flown KLM Business Class before and was very pleased with the product, but the old seats are not lie-flat and do give you the feeling that you're slowly sliding down to the footrest when you are sleeping.

So needless to say, I was very excited to see what the new Business Class was like. Add to that that the 747 is my favourite aircraft and we would be sitting on the upper deck, and you can guess that I was in high spirits before I even entered the airport.

A glimpse of people lining up on the beach at

the end of the runway for a good blast of jet fuel.

The routing is Amsterdam-St Maarten-Curacao-Amsterdam, so the aircraft isn't on the ground at St Maarten for very long - the actual turn-around is at Curacao.  The first flight is rather a short one, around 1hr 15 mins.  Business Class passengers are treated to a drink and a small snack, but they don't give out blankets, for example.  I chose sushi for my snack, but regretted it - the rice was dry, and the fish was still a bit frozen because it had been kept at low temperature all the way from Amsterdam I would guess. I'd say it's not the best choice - so I asked if they had more sausage rolls, which was another option - alas, they were all gone and the flight attendant told me they were very popular, probably for good reason.

The stopover at Curacao is somewhere between 1 and 1½ hours, and all passengers have to disembark so they can clean, cater, and re-fuel.  Then we boarded again, and were greeted by new, friendly crew who had had a 48-hr stop at Curacao.

I totally fell in love with the captain, who didn't mind a couple of curious travel agents paying him a visit in the cockpit - oh I hope there is not some rule against this so he'll get in trouble for me telling this.  He was just the friendliest guy, and during the flight he actually went around saying hello to all the passengers, not just the lucky few ones on the upper deck. The purser told me he even helped fix the inflight entertainment system in one of the Economy Class seats!  Truly a good ambassador for KLM.

Now for the product itself.  Really comfortable seat, just like on Air France.  It is equipped with a privacy screen that you cannot move - handy if you don't know (or like) the person sitting next to you, or especially if you're working during the flight. Less handy if you would like to kiss your seat mate, but then you just have to lean over it :-)

As you can see, the overhead compartments

on the upper deck are comparatively small - you will not

be able to put your rollerbag there. Those go in a special

"wardrobe" near the galley.  If you need easy access to

your rollerbag without having to walk back and forth,

you will probably want to sit on the main deck, where 

I guess the overhead compartments are normal size.

Someone once told me that the upper deck felt

really "cramped" - with the exception of tall

passengers having to duck a bit getting into the

window seat, I did not find this to be the case at all.

It was airy and spacious.

The TV screen is huge - and if you need to, you can send e-mails or SMS from it (but that does involve swiping your credit card in the remote control, so I did not try out that particular bit).

There is also a language course on offer - strangely enough, only French.  Why not Dutch, I wonder?

The movie selection was good; I didn't take any pictures of it and didn't watch anything, but I got the impression it was a notch better than Air France.  But really, I am a poor judge of that.

Drinks were on offer - they had a really good champagne, and as I was in such a good mood that it became my beverage of choice all through dinner. I mean, after the first round, everyone moves on to wine for the dinner, and they had half a bottle of champagne left from the welcome drinks. It would have been a shame to let that go to waste - so I helped them...

Entrée: "Breast of duck with mango chutney, pistachios, and cranberries"

Totally delicious. The duck was just the right shade of pink, the salad almost as good as on Air France, and the Dutch have better bread than the French.

Main course:

Choice between "spicy breast of chicken accompanied by roasted pepper sauce and Israeli couscous" - "grilled salmon complemented by herb-garlic butter, stewed fennel and fried rice" - and "braised beef with Dutch hutspot - a Dutch specialty featuring mashed potatoes, carrots and onions".

I chose the salmon and was delighted to find it wasn't dry at all (fish served at 10kms altitude does sometimes give the (correct but rather dry) impression of being as far from its natural environment as it can get). Delicious rice and fennel as well.

Dessert:

Having missed what was reported to have been a great chocolate cake on the Air France flight on the way out, I was determined to make the most of the dessert card.  We were given a choice between: cheese cake, tiramisu, and a cheese plate with Gouda and brie plus fruit.

Fortunately the friendly flight attendants did not mind letting the greedy passenger in seat 78B have both the tiramisu and the cheese cake - both were good, with the cheese cake as a clear winner.  For dessert I temporarily abandoned my champagne in favour of a port wine - a really good one; either Taylor's Late Bottled Vintage Port 2007, or Croft Pink Port (no idea which one, possibly Taylor's. I should have taken notes here)

Then it was time for a bit of shut-eye again. But only a bit - when we had finished dinner there was only around 6 hours of flying time left. But I slept really well on the flat seat, which was not roomy enough to sleep star fish in (I think you need First Class for that ...) but enough to sleep on my tummy with my leg at a slight angle :-)

And before I knew it, we were approaching Amsterdam and it was time for breakfast.  At dinner time, we had filled in a card with our choices of breakfast (I chose omelette over "cinnamon swirl French toast Amandine", fruit yogurt over plain, corn flakes instead of bran flakes, and honey instead of jam), so everything was cooked and ready when we woke up. The funny-looking thing on top of the omelette is a sausage, in case you were wondering. It tasted better than it looked. Oh, and the croissant was perfect!

Quick note on the amenity kit - totally decent, and some of the lucky ones got a "girly version" with a pink bow on it (I was trying to chat up the captain when they were given out, so I got the standard version, which is also very nice, though not pink ...)  There is no moisturiser; instead there is a full-size one, perfectly good, in the lavatories. But not a brand I know of, so Air France wins this one with their Clarins products.

Overall verdict: Brilliant seat. Good inflight entertainment. Delicious food, and especially delicious champagne.  And then, my very favourite thing about KLM: their staff. I don't think I have ever been on a KLM flight where the flight attendants were less than super friendly, and this one was no exception. I disembarked with a crush on the captain and one of the flight attendants (a male flight attendant, I hasten to add. His female colleague, I just wanted to be best friends with).

And the bonus: I love how, at the end of an intercontinental flight in KLM Business Class, you get to be a little girl again and pick a new "doll's house". Yeah, yeah, I know there's Bols inside, but the Delft houses are just so cute. And I delight in watching the business travellers, grown men in suits and ties, whip out their smart phones which can use the KLM Delft House app in flight mode to see which one they need for their collection.

See - Denmark's got snow today :-)

The Bucket List

Ikke at jeg egentlig dyrker det specielt meget - xx ting du skal nå før du dør. Men nu kan jeg krydse én ting af, som jeg har set på en del lister (nok de nørdede lister, men hey). Du kan se det lige her - videoen er ikke min, men den er et klik værd:




Jeg og nogle branchefæller var inviteret på en kort studietur med Air France-KLM, bl.a. med det formål selv at afprøve transit i Paris CDG lufthavnen (som har et middelmådigt ry hvad det angår - min (mere positive) version kommer i et senere indlæg), og også at bese deres Business Class, som for KLM's vedkommende er ved at blive opgraderet over hele flåden (og mere om det i et andet senere indlæg). Og destinationen blev altså St Maarten, hvor landingsbanen ligger lige ved stranden.

@ N ~ first installment from mini trip to St Maarten. Dedicated, of course, to "airport beach" where people can get a bad case of ADOA (Attention Deficit Oooh Aeroplane!) in no time at all.

Our hotel was right next to the airport beach; as you can imagine it gets quite a lot of business from plane spotters.  And people do line up; it is amazing to see the big jets gliding in just over your head. Or just over someone else's head, if you prefer a tiny bit of distance between yourself and the blast from the engines. According to the warning sign, the jet blast can "cause severe physical harm resulting in extreme bodily harm and/or death". Physical harm resulting in bodily harm, that is quite something.  Some loons hold on to the fence; personally I would not recommend that. You get the smell of jet fuel just fine, even if you're standing some way off.

De fleste fly letter i samme retning som de kom - altså VÆK fra stranden. Her får man altså ikke det fine syn - til gengæld kan man få en gratis sandblæsning. Jeg er lidt erhvervsskadet fra min tid i lufthavnen og turde altså ikke stå lige i blæset - jeg holdt mig et stykke ude i siden, og blev alligevel eksfolieret nydeligt bag på benene. Men jeg nåede at få et par fine skud af flokken:

The large aircraft generally take off in the direction away from the beach. The blast from 4 powerful engines is really extraordinary - I'm a chicken (who has worked at an airport) so I didn't want to stand directly behind it, but even so, my calves got sanded down nicely.  I did manage to get some lovely shots of the crowd - see how the sand and the water just get whipped up:

Ganz ehrlich: det var helt, helt fantastisk. Fuldstændig utroligt. Min indre nørd havde kronede dage.

Den allerstørste attraktion er KLM, for de flyver Boeing 747. Din ærede blogger er ingen undtagelse - da vi skulle hjem, var vi nogle stykker der efter incheck spadserede fra lufthavnen ned til stranden (en 10 minutters gåtur) og stillede os op sammen med flokken.

Main attraction: KLM. Because they fly the Boeing 747. Which just happens to be my personal favourite. So after we checked in for our flight home, a handful of us ambled back down to the beach (a 10 minute walk from the terminal) and lined up with the crowds.

And I can now cross one thing off my (non-existing) bucket list:

Right. That's it. We can die happy now (though

not right now, please)