Review of KLM Cityhopper flight from Southampton to Amsterdam in Economy

HELLO AMSTERDAM, I'M BACK!!!
Back in March 2015, I should have flown a Fokker F70. I had booked to fly on one, but bad weather resulted in a 737-700 (which was pretty good in its own right).
KLM 737 Report: http://flight-report.com/en/report/10316/KLM_KL1028_London_LHR_Amsterdam_AMS
So I decided this year, I was going to make up for it as well as finally go to the Aviodrome at Leylstad.
KLM had recently announced a new May 2016 service from Southampton to Amsterdam, using the sort after Fokker F70…
I checked out the pricing and found I could do an F70 both ways for £86 per person, nearly £30 cheaper than using LHR!!!
I have visited SOU before a couple of times, but never flown out of it. This would also be my first trip using a non-London airport.

The day started with a 4 hour drive to Southampton (via Bournemouth to visit family first).
We got to SOU and parked up in the long-stay, the shuttle bus arrived literally just as we got the bags out and we were at the Terminal in less than 5 minutes.

Finding security wasn't difficult as the one SOU Terminal is that small. Because we were before the evening rush hour for all the business aimed domestic flights, we were through security with in a good five minutes. Duty Free was really tiny to what I was used to as well. We went up to the old public viewing deck which is now an air side COSTA and home to a Lounge. Giving view to the 5 movements over 2 hours before my flight arrived.

I did find the departure boards amusing with their "Relax and Wait" signage against the flights that didn't have gate allocations.

My plane arrived ahead of its scheduled time and parked up at Gate 3. I went down after filming and photographing it. The plane for my flight that day was KLM Cityhopper Fokker F70 PH-KZK.

The boarding at SOU was an open-board which I thought was really excellent to receive as I prefer this to the boring jetways. Wouldn't have got this at LHR!!!

The KLM F70 had the new leather-look KLM interior. Which was comfortable. Legroom was a bit tight, but that was to be expected on a small regional jet. However I was easily able to fit into the seat so I didn't have much trouble with it. There was a nice mix of reading material in the seat pocket.

We boarded and departed on time, the Fokker F70 was about 80% full on the passenger front. empty seats were lacking on this out-bound service.

We departed on time having loaded up quickly. As SOU is a really quiet airport, we didn't hold, we had a clear run to the runway and then once we turned around at the end we rocketed out of Southampton, across London over the East of England and over the North Sea.

The crew delivered a complimentary bar service and offered a small snack box that contained a sandwich and biscuit with a cup of spring water. I also had a coke.

We began to descend through clouds and we quickly came over the Dutch coast line after breaking the cloud cover.

We circled a bit before coming into a dull and grey AMS. We parked up on a remote stand with all the other KLM F70 & KLM E-195 as well as some HOP! Embraer E-135/145.

I paid a quick visit to the flight deck on the F70, and got a picture of the Fokker's flight deck, which looked amazing before getting out onto a shuttle bus ready to take us across the Airport to the arrival gates at the main Terminal building. The journey was a good 10 minutes, but I got some great shots including the LOT Retro E-175, which I had seen at Zurich 2 months earlier.

After going through the passport control, we went to our hotel for the evening, ready for 3 days of aviation galore…