Review, Kenya Airways, Business Class, Amsterdam to Nairobi

Paul‘s Flight Report
Kenya Airways
Alliance: SkyTeam
Flight: KQ117
Route: AMS - NBO
Aircraft Type: Boeing 787-8
Flight Time: 8 hours 13 minutes
Business Class

General Impression: 🐑🐑🐑🐑

Before the Flight :
Check-in Process: in transit
Security Control : N/A
Lounge: 🐑🐑🐑🐑
Information: 🐑🐑🐑
Boarding @ Gate: 🐑🐑🐑🌿
Staff @ these points: 🐑🐑🐑🌿
Boarding in Cabin: 🐑🐑🐑🌿
Welcome Drinks: 🐑🐑🐑🐑
Punctuality: 🐑🐑🐑🐑🐑, 5min early
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: In Transit
—-
🐑 = 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:
Transiting in Amsterdam was quite easy despite the very veeeeerrryyy long ways to walk at the Airport.
As we arrived intra schengen, we did not have to go through security again.

Passport control was no problem as only automated gates were in use and a very short queue.

After emigration we made our way to the Crown Club Lounge.
KLM as the Skyteam home carrier is the lounge host for all other sky team members.
The lounge is massive in size and there was plenty of seating space.
The lounge is modern and is divided in many different areas.
The lounge offers many soft drink and coffee stations. Alcoholic beverages and drinks are available at a served bar. Depending on where you sit it is quite a walk.
They offered a nice variety of hot and cold dishes, salads and sweets. The hot food was actually cold and no sandwiches were available this time.
All in all a good business class lounge product.
Boarding started 45 minutes prior departure.
Priority boarding speech was made and conducted according procedures.
Staff at the gate was okay. Nothing of the ordinary.
At the aircraft door we were greeted by the a very friendly cabin crew manager.
The crew was very friendly at the door not really present in the cabin whilst boarding.
Very soon after boarding they served the welcome drink, consisting of 4 different choices of drinks including champagne and they distributed the menu and soon after the crew came to take the orders.
The seats were already equipped with headphones, the amenity kits as well as a bottle of water.
On every seat there was also a fluffy pillow, a mattress and a cozy blanket.
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 on this flight.

After take off the cabin crew first came around and distributed some hot towels and an aperitif was served.

Around 40 minutes after take off they started with the main service. On this flight the main service was dinner and a small continental breakfast prior landing.

Inflight Service:
The main service itself was absolutely top and the crew delivered an outstanding customer service.
The crew served the appetizer with bread rolls and offered drinks.
They cleared the empty plates and served the main meal. The plating from the galley flight attendant was amazing. Beautifully done and spotless plates.
During the hot meal service they offered refills of drinks all the time.
The food was super delicious and tasty.

Once you finished the main course, they cleared everything and a classic service trolley was set up where they served cheese, fruits and/or a dessert together some coffee as well as some digestives.

The main meal service KQ is offering is on a high level and can easily compete with other renowned airlines.

Around 1, 5 hours prior to landing in Nairobi the crew started with the breakfast service.
First some hot towels were distributed and then the breakfast service started.
Continental breakfast consisted of fresh fruits, yoghurt, bread and croissants with butter and preserve and they passed twice with drinks, coffee and tea as well.
Continental breakfast was super sufficient as per our inner clock, the service started 3:30AM. So there is no big hunger. Quality of the food was good.
We think that the inflight service as well as the catering has improved since our last flight.
The quality was very good and tasty.
The cabin crew on this flight was great.
They were present in the cabin and interacted with the guests. Most of them had a smile on their face and did their job with care, passion and class.
Especially the cabin manager on our side, she was a star.

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

The amenity kit is new in a environment friendly packing and all products are more environmental friendly.
It offers the regular content. (socks, toothbrush, eye mask, ear plugs, a comb as well as a pencil) .
Unfortunately the socks with the lion paw prints are gone.
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.

Announcements from the flight deck were good, slow and understandable.
The cabin crew announcements inflight were not understandable at all whilst the welcome and farewell were ok. They could be much louder.

No baggage delivery review as we are in transit.

Our summary:
A very solid and good business class product.
It isn't the newest hard product in the skies anymore but the crew was outstanding and the inflight service was top.
Again they proofed that Kenya Airways is a great option to fly to South Africa and we enjoyed any second of this flight experience.
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