It was a nice little flight, but SWISS did literally try to steal money from me,
so there’s that. Hi there, my name is Kevin and I make honest and to the point narrated
trip reports about flights and hotels all over the world. This is episode 130,
in Business Class on Edelwiess Air, the 26th airline featured on the channel. Stay tuned
to find out what the heck happened, the full report starts in 10 seconds.
Welcome to the back seat of a Volvo. Pretty comfortable actually. I’m on my way to Schiphol
airport and I am a full 3.5 hours early because well, airmageddon. If you’d like to know the exact
fare that I paid for this flight or my next five videos in queue, check out the description below.
As we approached the terminal, we saw what we thought were the remnants of the chaos that was
going on here, with security lines taking hours to pass through- but just a few weeks ago I saw
reports that they were having issues again. Considering how efficient my entire experience
was today, it’s kinda strange to believe. Something that’s also strange is the sheer
quantity of sponsored travel “reviews” on the internet these days. Whether the
sponsorship is disclosed or not, we all know you can’t fairly judge a product or experience
if they’re literally paying you to be there- and that’s why this review is unsponsored and
what you hear and see today is just my own honest opinion because this flight was 100% self funded.
If you enjoy authentic travel content please consider giving the channel a sub
and check out my Patreon in the description below. Yall are the sponsors of this video,
so thanks in advance for stopping by. Alright, inside we go. As far as the airport
itself goes, the only criticism I could muster up is less than clear signage. When I walked into the
terminal I literally could not figure out where to go and even once through security, I walked
in circles a bit trying to find the lounge since all signage refers to generic shopfront numbers
instead of actual names. Anyway not a big deal though and security was super simple.
I entered through the priority line but was then brought back to the normal line
since it was moving faster. Here, you can leave absolutely everything inside your bag. Because
I travel with a lot of electronics my bags are pulled aside around half of the time and today
was no different. But, they brought me to the end of the counter and they pulled up
a 4d scan of my bag and I believe that the agent was just going though and overriding
each automated alert the scanner found. After 20 seconds of her looking around the scan,
I was on my way, she didn’t even open the bag. Fantastic system.
Star Alliance has a new lounge in Amsterdam so that’s where I was in search of.
In case you too find yourself looking for it, follow the signage to Lounge
26-29 one level above and you’ll find it. The lounge was very Star Alliancey and had a
great assortment of seating areas and decent food and drink selections. Keep in mind this is around
7:30. After I did my filming the desk agent came up to me and asked me why I was filming.
I’m not often asked this, but I generally reply with another question, such as, “Oh, is filming
not allowed?”... she mentioned that they are short staffed still and she was worried things
wouldn’t look great. Well, I saw nothing to be concerned about and enjoyed my time in the lounge.
Alright, as we look around and then walk to the gate, let me explain about SWISS trying to steal
my money, etc. I’m going to give the Cliffs Notes version because it is a five month long story.
Originally I booked my flight in June through Expedia since the fare wasn’t available on SWISS’
website. Everything totally normal. Two weeks before any of my trips start, I go through flight
by flight and recheck my seats. When I checked, my flights were cancelled. I checked my email,
there was no notification and I know I didn’t get a call. I logged in and Expedia’s site said it was
canceled and I had a flight credit. I called SWISS, they said it was cancelled for lack of
funding, they sent me to Expedia. I double checked and sure enough I was charged, directly by SWISS.
Called Expedia and didn’t really care as long as I could use that flight credit for the same flights,
which were still available for even cheaper than my original flights. After an hour on the phone,
the agent couldn’t select the flights we could both see, then told me to use my flight credit
I’d need to pay a $150 fee levied by SWISS. Went back and forth with Expedia for 5 days
with no resolution and way to actually use the credit- all they could tell me is the ticket
was canceled because of a glitch between the finance and ticketing departments at
SWISS. Called AMEX and disputed the charge. Then, rebooked the exact same flights with
SWISS directly on their website. That’s part 1. After walking quite a ways to our gate, B23 I
arrived just in time to see our aircraft pull in. Now, you maybe wondering why this is an Edelweiss
flight. Well honestly, I’m not too sure. I don’t know how many SWISS flights this applies to, but
for this flight, sometimes it’s SWISS aircraft, sometimes Edelweiss, sometimes even AirBaltic.
But the onboard experience is basically all SWISS. For today’s flight stats, we took off 50 minutes
late and made it up to 33000 feet for just 11 minutes on this one hour flight to Zurich,
landing just 23 minutes behind schedule- which was fine since I had a 6 hour layover in Zurich.
Edelweiss is I should mention, a leisure carrier which was acquired by SWISS in
2008 and currently has a fleet of 14 aircraft, including 4 A340s it
inherited from SWISS. It’s previous A330s were transferred to Brussels Airlines and
Eurowings Discover. By the way, all of these airlines are owned by Lufthansa.
We had a relatively light load today and boarding was completed in a matter of 10 or 15 minutes.
The cabin is outfitted with very distinctly cerulean blue covered seats,
the cerulean pigment originally discovered in Switzerland. Learn something new everyday.
At this point I believe all narrowbody lufthansa group planes feature a version
of this uber slimline Recaro seat which is fine for an hour or two,
but it’s so thin you can feel the frame when you’re sitting. At least this version had
headrests though. Legroom was sufficient as as is typical with Euro business class
the center seat is blocked, but in reality I had the full row of three seats to myself.
Always appreciated airvents were above and each seat featured a coat hook and a
sticker instructing you on how to access the on demand IFE. Bottles of water and wetwipes
were handed out and we can take a look at how much legroom the bulkhead seats have. I don’t
like putting my backpack in the overhead bin, so I generally don’t choose them.
The back of the seats also have a personal devise holder demonstrated
here with the economy class buy on board menu. We pushed back, the safety less than modern safety
video was played and we taxied to the runway. Now, part 2 of the story. A month after I disputed
the charge, AMEX reversed the dispute, sending me 42 pages of screen grabs of every click I made
while purchasing my ticket. I agreed to the terms of the ticket so I couldn’t be refunded. Mind you,
this was after I actually took the new flights. I disputed it again and said, If I canceled the
tickets then yes 10000% I am bound by the no cancellation clause. But I didn’t cancel them,
SWISS did and they wouldn’t let me rebook with the same funds without paying $150. Two weeks later,
the dispute was rejected again. Now we’re in mid September. I disputed again, spent hours on the
phone with AMEX trying to explain more. A week later AMEX asked for a detailed account of the
entire situation, which resulted in a 4000 word timeline with excruciating detail from me. Now
we’re into October. In mid-October, I was refunded the money without futher explanation. In total,
that took 15.5 hours of my time on the phone, gathering info or typing documents. Thanks SWISS.
We would be taking off to the south today and then
continuing on a southeasterly course. The spool up and take off are up next.
What seemed like just minutes after take off breakfast was served. There were no choices,
but it did have a bit of everything and it was all really tasty so I didn’t mind the lack of options.
And thank you for trusting us with metal cutlery on such a short flight.
After the meal service the crew came around with chocolates as we began our approach into Zurich.
In retrospect, I should have been on the other side for better views,
but it’s hard to complain about Swiss hills and pastures.
We had a long taxi to a remote stand and we were very clearly in Switzerland.
A nice final view of our colorful bird and then we were bussed to the terminal. The
five of us in Business Class were given our own bus as we went on a tour of the tarmac.
Finally I made it inside and began searching for my home for the next 5 hours, the SWISS lounge.
Alright so here’s the Flip Flop Score. Let me mention,
I don’t want to give this story again in my next video so I’m only penalizing the score
here even though technically it was for my next flight to Athens as well. Speaking of which,
if you enjoyed this video, please give it a thumbs up and subscribe so you don’t miss
my next video with the best crew I ever had in real SWISS business class from Zurich to Athens.