Kenya Airways Review NBO - AMS

Paul‘s 201st Flight Report
Kenya Airways
Flight: KQ116
NBO - AMS / Boeing 787-8

Flight Time: 8 hours 5 minutes
Business Class

General Impression: 🐑🐑

Before the Flight :
Check-in Process: N/A in transit
Security Control : 🐑🐑🐑
Lounge: 🐑🐑🐑
Information: 🐑🐑🐑
Boarding @ Gate: 🐑🐑🐑
Staff @ these points: 🐑🌿
Boarding in Cabin: 🐑🐑🐑
Welcome Drinks: 🐑🐑🐑🐑
Punctuality: 🐑🐑, 17 min delay
During the Flight :
Food presentation: 🐑🐑🐑🌿
Food quality: 🐑🐑🐑🌿
Drinks: 🐑🐑
Service Procedure: 🐑🐑🐑
Amenity Kit: 🐑🐑🐑🐑
Entertainment System: 🐑🐑🐑
Seat Quality: 🐑🐑🐑🐑
Legroom: 🐑🐑🐑🐑
Lavatories: 🐑🐑🐑🐑
Cleanliness: 🐑🐑🐑🐑🌿
General Atmosphere: 🐑🐑🐑
Announcement Pilots: 🐑🐑🐑
Announcement Cabin: 🐑🐑🌿
Cabin Crew: 🐑
After the Flight :
De-Boarding: 🐑🐑🐑
Baggage Delivery: 🐑🐑
—-
🐑 = bad, a lot of work needs to be done
🐑🐑 = poor, you will be busy with corrections
🐑🐑🐑 = good & normal, nothing special
🐑🐑🐑🐑 = high level, but the icing on the cake is missing
🐑🐑🐑🐑🐑 = topnotch, leave me here!
🌿= Half a Point/sheep
—-
On the Ground:
As we were in transit in Nairobi and checked through, we only had to go through security control again.
Nairobi has a Sky Priority lane, which we were able to use.
Today the queue at the Security Checkpoint was much much longer and what was super bothersome is that Kenya Airways ground staff always brought people to the front of the line due to short connections. We were waiting for almost 25 minutes until it was our turn.
Also today they operated the security control lines with two people only. 1 person is working to check the people going through the scanner and then there is one person which operates the hand luggage scanner. If he puts a bag into second screen and wants to check it, he will stop the baggage scanning process and checks the bag manually himself.
All in all transiting in Nairobi was an easy thing and once through security we made our way to the Kenya Airways Lounge. As our departure gate for the Amsterdam flight was Gate 17 we went to the Pride Lounge which is just above gate 17. That lounge is super modern and is divided in many different areas.
The lounge offers a soft drink and coffee station as well as a all alcoholic bar. Softdrinks and alcoholic drinks were self service whilst the coffee bar was served.
Finally a really good coffee was served.
(Teaser: I didn't know it would remain the only one for that day, see next flight review).
They also offered a buffet with hot and cold breakfast items. The hot food selection was super poor and most casseroles were empty. I tried one of the left over egg mushroom dishes. The food was not good at all. It was super dry and chewy and must have been laying there for hours.
As per boarding pass, boarding should start 45 minutes prior the indicated departure time.
We went to the gate around 50 minutes prior departure and were boarded into a waiting area.
Staff at the gate was horrible. Not greeting customers, not looking at them simply scanning boarding passes.

Also here the boarding announcement were yelled into the waiting area. No microphone. A priority boarding yelling was made but again no check if only priority would board.

At the aircraft door we were greeted by a cabin crew member.
The crew on this flight was a massive disaster. But more to that later.
No crew in the cabin whilst boarding.
Very soon after boarding they distributed the welcome drink, consisting of 4 different choices of drinks including champagne.
After the welcome drink they distributed the menu cards and came to take the order for the breakfast main dish and then collected the menu again. I asked if they will take the order for the main meal later and the cabin crew said it is a different menu.
5 minutes later they distributed the same menu again for the main course.
The seats were already equipped with a fluffy pillow, a comfy blanket and the amenity kits.
The amenity kit is good and offers the regular content. (socks, toothbrush, eye mask, ear plugs, a cromb as well as a pencil.
As a nice touch and a perfect match for Kenya Airways "the pride of Africa" are the socks with the paw prints of a lion.
Inflight:
The Kenya Airways business class is a very nice and solid business class product. The 787-8 has a total of 30 business class seats in a 2-2-2 configuration in two small cabin sections.
The seats are very comfortable and offer enough privacy and space. Unfortunately they do not have sufficient storage space at all at the seat itself.
You have to stow everything either in the overhead bins or on the middle armrest between the seats.
All business class seats are fully lie flat and you have enough shoulder space as well as legroom space.
The seat worked perfectly fine and I had a very good snooze on this flight.
After take off the cabin crew first came around and distributed some hot towels. Then they started with the breakfast service.
The main meal consisted of fresh fruits, a joghurt, bread and croissants with butter and preserve and hot breakfast meal. They had the choice of 3 different hot meals.
Presentation of the food was good and the quality of the food was good too.
Again on this flight no coffee or tea was served and this is the 3rd flight without hot drinks. From the cabin crew we have heard 3 different stories alone on this flight why they aren't serving coffee.
Around 3 hours prior arrival in Amsterdam, the cabin crew passed to take the main meal order for lunch. Then they started with the lunch service.
First some hot towels were distributed and then the table was set up.
The lunch tray consisted of a fresh and delicious first course, some bread, cheese and butter and the dessert. Once you finished the first course the crew came around with the hot meals.
The meals were nicely presented and they tasted also really good.
As already mentioned above, the cabin crew in the business class cabin on this flight was a disaster.
One of them had no idea what she did and did and to our surprise only poorly understood English. Half of the orders came wrong and the other half of the orders got forgotten. She did take the orders for food and drinks but always something was missing or brought wrong. An other crew member was super arrogant and snippy with the passengers.
None of the crew members did interact with the customers, none of them showed some passion or love for what they do. They were robots and on some of them you could actually see that they fully dislike what they do.

Bathrooms were checked throughout the flight and always refilled. They were always clean.

The inflight entertainment is good and the screens worked fine. They have a good size and resolution for business class. The screens are touch screens but you can also choose the handheld devices to navigate.
Kenya Airways has a good selection of movies, films and series. Unfortunately they only offer the Films etc in 4 languages.

The aircraft is not equipped with wifi.

Flight deck announcements on this flight were way to silent and not understandable.
Cabin crew announcements were okay.

After the flight:

Baggage delivery in Amsterdam again was a disgrace for a European Airport and SkyTeam hub.
First bags arrived on the belt 30 minutes after arrival on the parking stand and priority bags came completely mixed.
Our summary:
A very solid and good business class cabin on this Boeing 787 Dreamliner.
A good inflight product quality, quantity and service wise.
On this flight, an absolute disaster of cabin crew and it showed once again that the crew makes the biggest difference.
We had now a 50/50 experience with our Kenya Airways flights.
Would we reuse them, yes we would as the hard product on board was good, ground product was okay and the crew can be a win or loose with every airline.
Simply don't expect a high end product.
Notes:
- Paul the Sheep does not get any benefits from the Hotels/Airlines etc.
- Paul will always pay for the services in order to be able to rate freely and truly about the experiences.
-If you are interested in more details, please send me a private message and I will be happy to share