Why should you NOT fly AirFrance

A lot of people have asked about my travel experience when I went home recently. I have been telling them sometimes in detail and sometime in brief that the total time spent travelling both ways was close to 5 days. 

5 days, Yes. That humungous amount of time that I literally spent on my travel was courtsey AirFrance. It is the time in which I could have gone around the world twice on a non-stop flight. Let me tell you what happened.

I was scheduled to fly from Manchester to Paris and Paris to Delhi and back via same route. Internally within India, I had to take an early morning train from Delhi to Bhopal and back. My flight from Manchester was on 16th of December early morning at 6.40 am. I had been to London and so came back early morning to Manchester. I stood in the first queue at 4.30 am and boarded the flight at 6 am. I was seated comfortably and since I was really tired because of the long night, I was soon sleeping after drinking a glass of water.

Half an hour past departure time, I woke up and realised that the flight was still in Manchester. Upon asking, the reason was, the fog at Paris airport delayed our departure. Reason accepted and I forced myself to sleep again. 45 min. later, I woke up again and this time realised the under the floor, in the belly of the aircraft, a massive movement was taking place. I asked again and I was explained that a passenger had checked in with her luggage, but later checked out while the airline did not knew which was her baggage so they were looking for her baggage. As soon as her baggage was sorted out, we will fly. This was the first time I started getting worried about my connecting flight from Paris to Delhi, which was at 10.25 am local time.

I wanted to clarify if my connecting flight would still be available and I was explained that while I may miss my direct flight from Paris, some arrangement would be met at Paris airport and I will have to wait until we reach Paris. Flight from Manchester took off around 9.30 am and we reached Paris at 11 am local time.

My flight to Delhi had left.

Almost co-passengers had missed their connections and then we stood in the customer service queue. It was 11 am and I got to the counter at 2 pm. It was an excruciating wait of nearly 3 hours in the queue without food and water. In the flight no breakfast was served and at the airport the treatment was "We are doing you a favor, dare you not question us". When my turn came up, I was exhausted and the darn lady at the counter said she could offer me a connection from London on AirIndia flight to Delhi. The flight was at 9.30 pm London time. To drop me to London, my flight was at 7 pm from Paris. She gave me a "Drinks + Sandwich" coupon and said 'BYE'.

I was pissed off. Treating me like a shit is no way to get away. Since I did not wanted to waste other passenger's time who were wearing out like me, I wanted to meet the manager separately. I got to meet him after an hour who, realizing what he was getting into, gave me nothing but a meals coupon. 

After coming down on the terminal, I had my lunch and found a chair to sleep. I woke up again at the departure gate for the flight to London to realise that the same flight was delayed by more than 1.45 hrs. There was no way I could reach London to catch the AirIndia flight. 

I went back to customer service.

The customer service guys had no idea how to help. Their supervisor couldn't even try to help apart from saying that I will have to spent the night at Airport since I did not have the visa to enter city and there is no possibility flying out that night via any connections. Still, I asked her to try to arrange something and later she took my passport, cleared us out of terminal and asked us to wait. Three hours after waiting in the no-man's land in the airport, I asked if my visa/passport has arrived. It had and I was moved into a sub-standard hotel at around 11.30 pm. There was no food or water and I slept hungry.

Next day I came to airport and asked the airline representative about the compensation and he asked me to contact customer service at Delhi who would be able to help. I belived him and boarded the flight.

I fly into Delhi and the airline guys gave me a sales office number to help me with my complaint. My entire reservations of previous day had gone awry and I had to re-reserve my ticket to Bhopal. Call to sales office gave me an email address of customer service in India. I emailed them and their response was

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Dear Mr Bhargava,

We acknowledge with thanks receipt of email dated 23rd December 2008, regarding your scheduled travel AF1469/ AF148/ 16th December 2008 Manchester/ Paris/ Delhi. At the outset, we offer our sincere apologies for any inconvenience that may have been caused.

May we kindly advise you that as you are currently residing in UK, your email has been forwarded to our office at the following address, for their necessary action:

Air France - Europe
Customer Care Center
TSA 13002
60035 Beauvais Cedex
France

Best regards,

Ashwani KUMAR
Customer Relations Supervisor

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So far, I have not heard back from them.

On my way back on 2nd Jan, the flight developed a technical snag and the oxygen pressure in the cabin was not enough to fly high altitude. This required re-routing as the aircraft could not fly over Afganistan. While they waited for a new route and the delay was over 2.5 hr. Instead of flying at 1.20 am, the flight took off at 4 am. 

My connecting flight from Paris to Manchester was at 7.40 am, Paris time and like last time, I missed that too. I had a confirmed train ticket to Lancaster at 11 am, local time. I missed that too. When I reached Paris, the guys gave me a new ticket and I reached Lancaster 8 hrs late in the evening.

My story ends here but I have vowed that unless there is a very compelling reason to fly AirFrance, I am never going to fly with them. I am going to wait for them to respond back to my complaint else I will lodge my complain under EU laws to European Transport Commission and hope that atleast they will redress my complaint.

Their rude customer service behaviour, non-responsiveness to customer issues was agonizing enough. I was not flying free and I understand issues like this do happen but other airlines are more responsive and try to make the experience better and not worse.

If you read this and decide to fly AirFrance, please think again.