u/DutchBlob

Seriously, how bad can one’s IT systems be? Their website is entirely unusable. And yes, I have disabled adblockers, vpns etc…

I specifically booked this flight, because the A220 is my favorite narrowbody aircraft currently in the air. What i didn’t know was that this flight was sponsored by Murphy’s Law.

First, our supposedly on-time departure got delayed because there was an (apparent) security incident at one of the security checkpoints at AMS. This caused approximately 10 people to miss this flight and, for obvious reasons, their baggage had then to be unloaded. So 30 minutes behind schedule we were on our way. Or so I thought. We were even allowed to sneak in front of a KLM Embraer to make up for the delay.

The engines started to roar and the A220-300 started to move down runway 24. Just seconds later, however, the pilot slammed the brakes (or can A220’s brake automatically?). In a reflex I put my hands on the wall in front of me, cause I could feel myself slipping off my seat despite wearing my seatbelt tightly. The people around me also looked around quite startled. It all happened so quickly. I’ve flown over 150 times but this was my first aborted take-off. We left the runway at the first possible exit. After a minute, the captain told us there was a technical problem with the plane and they were going to try and fix it at this holding position.

Unfortunately, it couldn’t be fixed right away so we were going to taxi to a remote gate and let mechanics come on board to assist. The remote stand D88 had KLM branded stairs at that position ready and waiting, but since Air France dumped their own airline’s ground handling at AMS and switched to Swissport, we had to wait for Swissport branded stairs and their mechanics to come on board. This was supposed to take a few minutes, but lasted another 20 minutes before they arrived.

What the exact problem was, remains unclear to me as I am writing this (other than it being some monitoring device issue, as i rephrased it) but it took over 45 minutes to fix it. Then we needed to refuel, despite the short distance we had ‘flown’. The APU is also using fuel of course.

When we finally we got the green light to depart, Murphy treated us with another gift: a taxiing plane broke down EXACTLY behind us. So we could not be pushed back and had to wait even longer before we could move.

Eventually at 13:35 (nearly 3 hours behind schedule) we started moving again. The pilot in command noticeably pushed the throttles forward much more slowly/gently than the first time. The departure, flight and arrival were for the rest uneventful. But a short 50 minutes hop turned into an hours long adventure.

I missed my connection at CDG and my next flight won’t depart until 20:30 tonight although that flight is now apparently also delayed by two hours :( But I’m absolutely not upset or angry. I really felt sorry for the crew. This is not what they had planned for when they woke up this morning, either. And passengers can be awfully rude about the tiniest things these days, but everyone remained remarkably calm (aside from the logical concerns about connecting flights).

Thank you very much, crew of AF1341, for your professionalism and the Swissport mechanics for getting this bird back into the air. Merci :)

Everybody get up and request Danceteria to be played on your local radio stations as well!