The joys of air travel

So it seems a pilot called in sick today. And apparently there are rules that say if you only have 2 pilots, you can't fly more than 8-1/2 hours. With one pilot sick, our plane only had 2 pilots. So that's why they only flew to Dublin. KLM dispatched fresh pilots to fly from Amsterdam to Dublin to turn around and fly our plane to Amsterdam, a 1 hour flight. Regulations ought to have clauses to avoid stupidity. But then it would only be a suggestion and not a regulation.

Our flight to Nairobi was scheduled to leave Amsterdam at noon. We landed at 11:30. By the time we taxied to the terminal and actually got off the plane, it was 11:45. We ran, ran, and ran from terminal D to terminal F. Not a short run. Had to run thru the shopping mall in the middle. We were thrilled to discover that the flight was just finishing boarding. There were probably 6 or 7 of us trying to get on the flight. KLM would NOT let us board. They had unilaterally rebooked all of us to fly 24 hours later, same flight tomorrow. We were so mad. They were still boarding but wouldn't let us on! We had boarding passes. But we were no longer on the official roster and they wouldn't add us. Blah blah blah about not enough time for our luggage to transfer. We said we didn't care of the luggage came a day later. But to no avail. There are luggage regulations to follow. Regulations, again.

We knew there were other options besides waiting 24 hours, which some people were willing to do. Kenya Airways has a direct flight to Nairobi later in the day but it is oversold with a long standby list. Some had KLM to book them to Nairobi via Dubai, but those seats were gone by the time we asked. But we did get KLM to put us on Turkish Air to Istanbul and then to Nairobi at 4am. So hopefully we'll get there only 8 hours later than planned.

We are not happy with KLM today, to say the least!