After spending a few weeks in Asia it was time for me to head home to spend christmas with my family. I had booked a KLM flight for this, from Jakarta via Kuala Lumpur and then Amsterdam.

You can find a more recent review of the KLM World Business Class in the Boeing 777-300ER here in Dutch. 

Online Check-In

At 30 hours before departure I checked in online and I was offered to purchase an upgrade to KLM’s World Business Class product for 329 euros. Considering this was a long flight I did not hesitate and bought the upgrade and selected seat 1D.

The next morning I decided to recheck the seatmap to see how full the flight would be, where I noticed that it had changed to the lay-out of KLM’s Boeing 777-200 with updated cabins. This was a great Christmas present! Considering  the New WBC I decided to change my seat to row 6 as this was displayed as a mini cabin behind the galley.

Airport & Lounge

Traffic in Jakarta is no fun. I had to change terminals (from 3 to 2) and that took over an hour. After the on-ground check-in and security I headed over to the lounge. KLM uses Skyteam partner Garuda’s lounge in Jakarta. It was my 4th time this year in this lounge, and while it has never been too busy, it lacks the feeling of being a flagship lounge, especially now that Garuda is Skytrax 5-star airline. Hopefully this will be adressed in 2015.

Jakarta – Kuala Lumpur

At the beginning of boarding it looked like this wouldn’t be a full flight, but when the doors closed business class was 100% full and economy class very close to that, so the hop to Kuala Lumpur was going to be a busy one.

When Economy class passengers board they have to walk through the mini cabin and so the crew had a bit of a difficult time getting some pre-departure champagne to us, but in the end did manage to reach us. At that time the menus where also distributed for this short 1,5 hour flight. It was the crew’s first flight on a refurbished 777-200 and openly questioned why management decided to put in the extra row/mini cabin as also the economy class cabin crew constantly has to go through the cabin with their carts causing a lot of traffic.

After takeoff the meal service began and I opted for the noodle option. This was ok, but not completely to my liking.

After about 1,5 hours we started our descent and the crew came by to distribute the KLM houses. Regretfully I was denied one at first, as I would be flying onwards to Amsterdam and the crew had been instructed not to give out doubles. However they would set aside my preferred house (the newest #95), for when I would be landing in Amsterdam. However, before leaving the plane the purser did sneakily give me ‘my’ house

Kuala Lumpur – Amsterdam

After a stop of about an hour in Kuala Lumpur we were ready to board for our final flight back home to Amsterdam and I took my seat again in row 6. The crew informed me then that business class would be far from full and asked me to move to the main cabin, as directly behind me was the first row of economy comfort where a lot of babies were seated and this could cause a lot of noise, and so I moved.

As midnight was approaching the next meal service was either the express or the normal service. I opted for the normal service as the previous meal hadn’t been great. But this meal was also a bit underwhelming, which seems to be a trend on KLM flights ex-Asia in my personal experience.

 

After a meal and some drinks with a movie it was time to go to sleep so I reclined me seat into the fully flat mode and took a 7 hour snap and woke up just in time for breakfast. (As the first passengers where already served breakfast)

After breakfast with about 1 hour before landing the crew was preparing the cabin for landing and came by to thank us for flying KLM and I was able to choose my second KLM house.

We touched down at about 6Am on Christmas day and after a long wait for my bags I made my way to spend Christmas with my family!

Overall I had a really enjoyable flight and a good crew that was always friendly and willing to help. It was a shame that the meals where not great, but the main goal was just to get some sleep and I sure did! And for the price of 329 euros on such a long flight I would buy this upgrade again in a heartbeat!

Some more pictures from the flight: