KLM Royal Dutch Airlines review: forced to keep both flights or lose my return

Via Expedia I booked a return flight from Manchester to Amsterdam with KLM for August 19th-26th 2026. I subsequently wanted to change the outgoing flight to the 18th. Apparently though my ticket's T&C (small print) didn't allow this, even though I was prepared to pay for the privilege. I basically wanted to pay them for the change, as other airlines (including budgets) permit or do for free.

Luckily there was an Easyjet flight to Amsterdam on the 18th for just £43. I thus called (and messaged) KLM and asked if I could simply cancel the outgoing flight with no refund but retain the return flight. Surely there could be no problem here, as they would lose nothing and could easily profit by re-selling my outgoing seat.

They refused to do this, and told me that if I didn't show for the original flight they would cancel my return flight with no refund. I had to be on both flights or they would simply take my money. Putting it another way, I was being forced to take that flight on the 19th or they would pocket my entire £313 and wouldn't fly me home.

I raised multiple support tickets, WhatsApp messages and even emails to corporate addresses, but they simply ran me around in a fruitless loop, ultimately rejecting my requests. Expedia also tried really hard to address on my behalf, but with the same outcome.

Surely this wasn't right? It seemed to be very spiteful and anti-consumer, and not what I would expect from any reputable company.

STILL MORE
Sadly KLM then decided to add further injury and insult. I had pre-booked another KLM flight - a return from Amsterdam to Kiruna in Sweden, changing in Stockholm. The first return leg was suddenly cancelled for no given reason. However, I simply received notification of this. There was no attempt to fix it, or find an alternative flight or anything else from them. Despite booking via KLM, I was left high and dry. I would have been stuck in Kiruna as far as they were concerned.

Luckily I managed to find another flight with the help of SAS (who were operating the flight) and Expedia, both of whom were excellent. KLM was simply missing in action, disinterested, and offering no help whatsoever via any channel.

A final glitch on this second saga was that I couldn't check-in on the KLM website. It simply refused to allow this. The SAS website came to the rescue.

How normal is it for an airline ot cancel a flight and make no effort to sort out a replacement?

ANTI-CONSUMERISM
All in all this was REALLY awful service. It was petty, providing no real care for the customer in terms of resolution and was an extreme case of anti-consumerism and hiding behind small-print.

Aside: I used to fly regularly with KLM to Asia (a number of times per year). I still travel there frequently, but stopped using KLM when they took a YEAR to refund a fare when COVID appeared (BA, AA, Emirates, Alaska Air, all refunded in days). In fact I still had tens of thousands of FlyingBlue miles in my account until recently (now spent as I won't be using KLM again). I had only just started to get over that and had started to use KLM again. This was a mistake that won't be repeated.

AVIATION-ADR
Eventually I went to AviationADR and lodged a complaint there. As if by magic, as soon as a third party got involved, I actually received a response. They paid £220 for refusing to allow me to fly home. This was nowhere near good enough in the circumstanes, but I took the money.

From here I will expose KLM for what it is at every opportunity, and as above, I will never fly with them again.

I strongly advise anyone thinking about booking a flight with KLM to reconsider. The small-print is loaded and they will clearly hide behind it whenever there is a problem or an issue, which seems to be frequent. I rank them as the worst of any airline I have flown with, and this is a substantial number.