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.

Term Vacations - Looking back and forward

I have been really late in posting and updating here. 

I ended my term a little earlier from the official ending. I visited London for a career fair that was a farce if not anything else and then headed home to India. London's visit was a pleasant one as that was my first visit and hence I had a lot to visit as a tourist.

15 days in India were quite memorable ones as getting reunited with the family during the year was never on the cards when I started on this course. It was really a busy schedule with kids, relatives, visits to different places etc., all taking place at the same time. The only pain point was travel back and forth with AirFrance being an airliner to blame for most of it (I will write my travel experience after this post).

Back home, my kids have really grown well, esp. the younger one. He is now 3.5 month old and looks really smart and handsome. As you may believe, most of my time was spent in changing his diapers and helping my wife. I had couple of assignments to lookover but there was hardly anytime and also the undersea Internet cable cut kept me away from my laptop for a very long time. Towards the end, the decision was to open the books only at Lancaster.

I reached here on 2nd of Jan and since then it has been a little relief before the storm. The storm is going to hit on Jan 9 when I have my integrated case study exam covering the entire Term 1. I was given a case book to write notes, but unfortunately that lies in my home in India.

MBA and War on Mumbai

The world changed over the past few days. 

The Mumbai attacks have had a great impact on me and I am forced to think why it happened. While the answers may be straight forward, I am in no position to offer my views on it presently. My current workload requires me to concentrate fully on the task at hand, but following the attacks took lot of time. Presently I have my Organizational Behavior presentation scheduled for in the morning, I had my Operations Management exam on Monday.

I have observed that since the blasts, my energies are devoted in search of the above answers looking/searching for a solution. For all my course cases and exams, I have no energies to concentrate. Globally, terrorism has risen as a multi-headed hydra and I am looking for ways to counter the same in my personal capacity. It is a quest that I wish to take. The answers/success reasons may be apparent to some, but I strongly believe that terrorism can be quelled. 

I want to make my country very strong, economically, and that to certain extent will help in achieving strength. It is a very long ardous route, but history is a testimony that we received freedom from the colonial rule after more than 200 years. So, to put it subtly, winning the war should be like a one day cricket match, but if it is supposed to be a test match, then come on Mr. Terrorist, we will defeat you in that version of the game also.

On a second note, I am looking forward to my first London visit next weekend. If you are there in London over the next weekend and would like to meet me for a cup of coffee or so, send me an email. From London I am looking forward to my trip back home where I tend to spend a great time with family (I have lot of assignments to take care of then also)  before embarking on another journey of completing my MBA.

Very late in posting.. Apologies

Apologies to all who visited me over the past few days and did not find anything new. I have hardly had time in past few days and I think few of you might relate to me. I am quite of sync with the body and the course demands. I think some of the demands are simply outrageous. Body demands rest and course demands attention, I am thinking of various means to put an end to this misery of mine. Someone said the solution is simple - Sleep. The question is - When?

Well, I think my absence from the blog world helped me a bit. I have finished my accounting assignment and various other things seem to be on track. That as of now is current update.

Now, some history. 

Barcamp went really well. I had never planned for the structure that eventually took shape, but that is the beauty of barcamps. They have no structure and they are all very fluid. No one, outside the course attended but whoever came in appreciated the concepts and some were demanding it to be a weekly or a fortnightly affiar. Sorry folks, next one will be there but it will be some time in the summer time. Need support and logistics for that. MBA foyer will not do as a venue.

Thanks to all who made that happen. Participants, Jeet in particular, MBA office staff for the supplies and venue and all others who helped in whatever way. Thank you once again.

The other important news of this week is the visit of the class to Airbus (Wings) factory here at Chester and to United Biscuits factory at Charlisle. I went to Airbus factory and saw something which was amazing. Entire world has seen the Airbus A380 on TV or pictures, I saw the real wings, wings getting manufactured, shipped over sea and air to Toulouse in France. The factory was a massive place and it is definitely an experience that I will cherish for a long time.

Right now, I have Operations Management to read, submit Accounting assignment, read for Finance exam next week and also think about other assignments which I have not so far.

3 more weeks before I head back home for a short break. Don't know if that will be a break with various assignments submissions looming large as soon as school reopens, but will try to have some good fun and homely food.

Birthday surprise

What an epiphany in just 5 hours after posting the last post. There were bunch of blokes (17+1) banging on my door in the middle of night (12.25). While some were expected, my expectations were surely "outnumbered". Altogether, it was a pleasant experience. It is not daily that I see people in such a large strength on my door to wish me on my b'day and splatter my face with chocolate cake after it had been ceremoniously cut.


It was fun. It was surely a great feeling. After a long time, I got some birthday bumps. It is originally a UK tradition and the guys followed it in spirit.


Just wanted to thank who all wished me on my day and made it a memorable day. It surely is a day worth remembering away from family with new friends. Will cherish for a very long time.