Fly Air France for Lost days and Lost Luggage (Air France in general)

Member Name: ChrisCC

Product:	Air France in general
Date:	22/01/03 (1856 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Good for masochists

Disadvantages: Endless delays, Lost baggage, Rude, arrogant, no info

DON'T FLY AIR FRANCE

How Air France did its best to spoil our Cuban holiday-of-a-lifetime.

We flew off fine to Paris early on Saturday. When we arrived at Charles de Gaulle, we saw that our 13:25 flight was "delayed", so had a sandwich and thought no more of it. However, we were getting fidgetty by 3pm.

At about 4pm, we found out it was cancelled - apparently the inch of snow was an adverse weather condition. (No more flights went, and the poor people for Manchester spent 2 hours boarding, sat on their plane for 2 hours, then had to get off again. One of them had 4 children.)

We then spent an hour and a half waiting for our luggage to reappear, and the rest of the time until 11pm queueing - no-one could quite tell us what for. (While queueing, no-one was given food, drink, vouchers or even water.) It turned out that people were being given hotel and meal vouchers when they reached the head of the queue. . But shortly before we made the it (around 400 people were being serviced by only 2 queues) they ran out of hotel spaces - or those they had contracts with, anyway. The rest of us were given vouchers for taxis and told to find our own hotels, which Air France "may or may not" refund. It was difficult, but eventually the fifth taxi agreed to take us, and we found a hotel half way to Paris, still with lots of empty rooms. Air France had refused to ring round for any of us. In fact, throughout the whole time, despite claiming to be "devasted" when they were buttonholed, none of them made any effort to explain, be polite, hurry or appear to care. We would not have been surprised if they'd started filing their nails instead of dealing with the queues.

We were up early and back at the airport on Sunday morning, despite having been told not to bother, just to ring this (unanswered) number. But others were there earlier still. A handful got on Sunday's flight. That day was spent


queueing too. We got hotel vouchers and boarding cards for Monday by about 3 pm. (Vouchers all written out slowly by hand.) The hotel vouchers included vouchers for lunch, dinner and breakfast. At no time did Air france announce anything, so at one point I had to leap onto the luggage belt to get them to talk to me, (people cheered) and to silence the masses.

They couldn't even explain properly where we got the courtesy bus to the hotel; that took endless pfaffing about. The bus driver was a lunatic, and Bob still bears the bruises. At the hotel, we tried to claim our coutesy lunches, and were told we couldn't have them as we were too late!

We were up EVEN EARLIER next morning, and back at the airport. Once again an unruly queue grew. In the end, we managed to hand in our luggage, delayed also by the barcoding machine breaking down and labels being written out by hand. We had a courtesy meal, then went to departures and waited and waited, as the flight was once again "delayed". At last, boarding started at about 8pm - this was very slow as people had to go on a bus to the plane, and they only ordered a new bus once the previous one was full, and wouldn't process anyone unless there was a bus there. The stairs down to the bus were extremely slippery. The overcrowded buses got us to the plane, and we spent an uncomfortable 10 hours flying, with Bob's knees pushed nearly up against his chin,


After a fantastic 2 weeks in Cuba (cut short by 2 days, thanks, Air France), it was time to fly home.

Our flight was signed as being 3 hours late; we eventually flew off about 6 hours late. This after another vegetarian food fight ("You didn't book it" "Oh yes we did" "Oh no you didn't" etc etc, until we managed to prise vouchers out of them so that we could eat at a cafeteria before boarding). Bob had a bit more leg room this time - we'd specially
asked
for
it - so the flight was slightly better. At Paris, we found we had half an hour until a flight to London, so raced to that. It left a bit late, because, we were told, luggage from Jo'burg was being loaded. I asked whether the luggage from Havana was on board, the stewardess went off to check, and said it was.

Guess what? At Heathrow, after watching the luggage carousel forlornly for about half an hour, someone came and said, "Don't you know? Luggage hasn't come through". Good of Air France to lie to us again, to keep us uninformed again, and just what was the delay at CdeG when they were supposedly loading Jo'burg bags? (Nothing from Havana or Jo'burg arrived.)

Once again, we were surrounded by people saying "This is the worst airline I've ever flown with." WHY HADN'T WE LOOKED AT DOOYOO BEFORE??? Queue queue queue, then we get to fill in a form to describe our 3 missing bags, and are promised we will get them the next day.

Today is the next day. We have had a phone call to say ONE bag is coming. No word about the other two. No-one answering the phone number.
UPDATE EVENING OF "NEXT DAY": all luggage received now, 3 bags in 2 deliveries, last about 9pm. Seems OK. Phew!

(I handed in a letter of complaint about the outward trip, plus request for reimbursement of hotel costs, over 2 weekes ago. No reply.)

Take our advice: Don't fly Air France, tell your friends and family: DON'T FLY AIR FRANCE. Not if you want to keep your bags and your sanity.

UPDATE MARCH 03
About 8 weeks after all this happened, we received a letter telling us they would give us £65 between us, cheque to be sent separately. No cheque yet.

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