Previously, the flights were operated on VLM's own Fokker 50 aircraft. Now VLM is part of the Air France-KLM group, it's operation is being closely integrated with the Air France subsidiary Cityjet, which operates a fleet of Avro RJ85s in and out of LCY.
The buyout led to KLM's Fokker 50 operations being cancelled, and merged into the VLM schedule, which was beefed up, replacing the VLM Fokkers with CityJet RJ85s.
The main change at LCY is that VLM's check-in and bag drop has moved from the far end of the check-in hall to be next to their Air France cousins nearer the front door.
This all worked as normal for LCY. Pick boarding pass up from one of the machines, drop bag in the normal way. Easy and quick security experience.
The trip to LCY only took 20/25 minutes from my front door too, thanks to the new DLR extension to Woolwich. This is excellent and just reinforces the usefulness of LCY for me.
Boarded the waiting RJ85, EI-RJA, which is in the Cityjet plain white colour with red tail stripe.
Seating inside was the very cramped 3+3 type of seating. Many other carriers, e.g. Swiss, only seat this aircraft as 2+3. Fortunately, the plane wasn't full, so it didn't feel that cramped. Given that I've never been on a Cityjet flight that was 100% full, I often wonder why they bothered to cram in that extra column of seats.
One of the funny things is that the main on-board announcements are pre-recorded, as well as the safety demo, and they are in some weird Irish accent with strange intonation. I wonder if the voiceover artiste was either a foreign person who had lived in Ireland for a long time, or was an Irish person who was talking in some sort of mock posh accent! Anyway, it just sounded plain odd, even if it was clear.
We got away pretty much on time, taking off to the West and turning right to head toward Amsterdam, and the two crew started their service.
The crew on Cityjet are much smarter than I remember them, which I guess is part of their relaunch last year, wearing a modification of the Air France uniform. From what I could tell, the flight crew were Dutch, and the two girls in the cabin sounded a bit French.
The other disappointment beside the cramped seating was the Cityjet inflight service.
VLM used two crew to serve the Fokker 50, would usually serve your snack (e.g. a sandwich or yogurt) on a half-tray, with proper glassware and crockery, throughout the aircraft. A second run of tea and coffee would be offered, usually with a Leonidas chocolate square (if it wasn't already on your tray).
Sadly, on the Cityjet aircraft, the service is done entirely out of plastic, no second runs of coffee or tea, and the sandwiches seemed pretty dreadful compared to what was previously offered on VLM. The rest of the catering is Air France-style, including terrible Nescafe coffee, though I suspect the wine is drinkable.
I was glad that I had brought an emergency BLT in the airport.
This just isn't the same quality of service. Sure, the flight time is about 10-15 minutes quicker in the jet, and we arrived on time at Schiphol, but as far as I can see, that is the only improvement for the passenger - though it's probably improved AF-KLMs profits no end.
The bags were already appearing on the carousel when I arrived in the reclaim hall, despite the change of ground handler - they have insourced (from Menzies Aviation) back to KLM's own handlers at Schiphol, who have a good record of trashing and losing my bags in the past. Maybe they have since improved their track record!
Overall, the flight did what it had to do, but missed the service touches which made VLM a bit different in this age of lowest-common denominator 'race to the bottom' in the industry.
Mike
