Review of KLM Cityhopper flight from Vienna to Amsterdam in Business

Day trip to Vienna

Many years ago my father and me often did weekend trips to multiple cities across Europe and Asia, but as this was pretty non-existing anymore since I moved out years ago, we actually took the opportunity to make a day trip to Vienna as we both had a spare day and found two reasonable priced tickets to our destination on two separate itineraries. Our flight to Vienna would be performed by Austrian, which would be a new airline to me and our return leg was going to be performed by KLM Cityhopper in J class as KLM gave me very reasonable prices for J class, which costed me only about 40 p.p. more compared to their Y class tickets.

So see below the following routing like I described.

Vienna Schwechat Airport

After a solid 6 hours in downtown Vienna, it was time to return to Vienna Airport by railway. We took the S7 line from Vienna Mitte, which costed us 3.90 euro and the ride itself would take about 30 minutes. There is a direct line (CAT), which is more expensive and would take about 15 minutes, but this service had been temporarily suspended like I said in my previous report to Vienna. 

The ride itself was not crowded at all and we were soon dropped off at the train station. Currently all airlines would operate from Terminal 3 and it was pretty easy to find your way as signage was clear and simple. 

The terminal on landside is quite unique, though I'm not a massive fan of it as it's pretty dark and does not offer a lot of things. 

The Air France-KLM check in was very quiet with a single person checking in. We did not carry any luggage, so we proceeded to security, which took little to no time to clear as there were only a few more flights departing tonight. The priority lane was open, but wasn't really a useful feature as of right now due to the low number of passengers.

A Boeing 777-200ER of Austrian grounded. I have an itinerary to Bangkok with Austrian for upcoming March, but I am highly doubtful whether that would be happening given the closed borders in most of the countries in Southeast Asia.

You have access to several lounges in Vienna with a J ticket on KLM, but only one was open given the current pandemic and that would be the Sky Lounge. It's a pretty small lounge in which 50% of it was under construction, though with the limited number of passengers it was absolutely no issue. Furniture wasn't the most appealing to be fair, but the seats were very comfy and made private by dividers

Food was also very limited and was self service without any prepackaged food. On the cabinet behind the food cabinet, you could fulfill your alcoholic desires or simply opt for a coffee, tea or soft drink. Juices and plain water were available too on the far right. 

We decided to move to our gate about 10 minutes to departure after spending a good hour in the lounge, while most shops were closing down or were already closed. Pretty understandable with only five more flights to depart tonight and none of them were large aircraft.

The pier our flight would depart from was very deserted and it was also the first indication that our flight would be very empty.

And here was our aircraft to Amsterdam. PH-EZV is an 8.3 year old Embraer E-190 who has solely been in service with KLM Cityhopper. It is powered by two General Electric CF34 engines and can carry up to 100 passengers in a two cabin configuration. About thirty minutes ago, the sun was shining bright with temperatures up to 25 degrees, yet it changed in no time to a thunderstorm over the airport.

Boarding was called on time and we were kindly greeted by one of the flight attendants. No disinfection wipe was offered. I sat down on seat 1A, which comes with the most generous legroom offered on an E-Jet. The boarding completed call was made shortly after and resulted in me and my father being the only J passengers and Y class was filled with another 30 passengers or so. Definitely not a profitable flight.

One of the flight attendants offered us a bottle of water.

The worst feature of this seat is probably that you don't have a view of the wing or engine.

 A Laudamotion was parked next to us. An airline that is soon to be dissolved by Ryanair as they will create a new AOC for this airline in Malta under the name of Lauda Europe, so Ryanair could practise their maffia moves by paying less taxes and give them more rights to treat their flight crew as trash.

A very very low load factor as you can see in the photo of the cabin below.

The seat also comes with an individual light and air vent.

Push back was about 5 minutes ahead of schedule and the pilot informed us that it was going to be quite a bumpy ride till we reached a significant higher altitude. 5 minutes past our scheduled departure time, we were rolling down runway 29 for our flight to Amsterdam.

And the departure indeed was very bumpy with lots of rain showers among us.

The literature given to us and KLM is only one of the few airliners to still invest in a magazine despite the current circumstances. While it used to be renewed every month, the magazine was now kept for an entire season to somehow cut costs a bit. It is also available in Economy.

The tables are located in the armrest for row 1 and are tables to be careful with as they are anything but sturdy.

Service was delayed a bit due to the bumpy ride, but once we were clear the flight attendants jumped into action and we received our menu card for today's flight. No choice of food was given to us and the only choice we had is whether we were willing to have it or not (in a gentle and kind manner though!).

A ceasar salad is obviously not the most luxurious meal you would expect, but it was sufficient for a flight of two hours.

The meal was served in a KLM designed carton box and all meals were covered by a plastic cover. The ceasar salad itself was a bit salty, but was ok to eat. Not the best, not the worst. The mousse in the top left corner was far from good and should be quickly forgotten. The cutlery was made from recycled plastic.

Next to that, a  small bag of ''Olive crisp'' and a ''Stroopkoek''. It also had two disinfection wipes in it to clean.

As drink I chose sparkling water instead of any alcoholic drink as I still had to drive home by car and was served in a proper KLM branded glass.

A better look at the legroom I've had. After about a hour in flight, the cabin crew came around asking us if we wanted something more to drink, but I kindly rejected her offer and she returned back to Economy to continue serving catering to Y passsengers. I guess KLM is only one of the select few airlines within Europe who still offers regular service to their passengers in both classes.

About 20 minutes to land, the sunset was almost done and the KLM pilots checked in with us to inform us that we were already in approach to Amsterdam providing us with information about the current weather, that we would be shipped by bus to gate as we were parking on a remote stand and that we would arrive about 15 minutes ahead of our schedule and thanked us for flying with KLM.

It was already very dark the moment we were close to touchdown on the furthest runway possible.

We were parked next to a sister KLM Cityhopper.

KLM doesn't really have a special disembarking procedure, but not really anyone was moving when the seatbelt sign was turned off. The flight attendant really had to announce with a joke that despite on how much the passengers had enjoyed their flight, it was really time to disembark the aircraft right now. Disembarkation was done within five minutes with a such a low numbers and gave us a good view of the aircraft that brought us over. A single bus was sufficient to bring us to the terminal without being overcrowded.

By this time Amsterdam on landside was pretty deserted too with most shops, but restaurants and supermarkets being closed. It was now our time to proceed to our car and leave for home after a pleasant flight with KLM Cityhopper.