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Our Childhood friend Sivananda Thancanamootoo took a AIR FRANCE flight from Manchester to New Delhi enroute on Sept 4 to attend a family wedding at Cochin Kerala. He DID NOT get his luggage on arrival & was told that it would be delivered at his residence in Cochin Kerala where he went for the wedding. He did not have his clothes nor the presents he brought for the wedding. After more than 2 dozen calls we were informed that the baggage had arrived on Sept 7th ( 3 days later) at Cochin Airport & he would have to collect it at night. A futile 2 hour trip by Taxi to the Airport & back emptyhanded. He was informed that it was put on an Indian Airlines flight as AIR FRANCE had some arrangement only with IA/AI & again on return to Delhi on 8th August at Cochin he again wasted 2 hours at the Airport searching at the Air India & Indian Airlines counters. NO BAGGAGE HAD ARRIVED ACCORDING TO BOTH INDIAN AIRLINES & AIR INDIA> Subsequently on 9th Sept we received a call from a Mr.Saurabh that the baggage was sent by Jet & it was being returned to Delhi late night. Any attempts to speak to the head of Air France was blocked rudely by an employee called Kavita.
Today marks 5 days after his baggage went missing & AIR FRANCE FAILED TO GIVE CORRECT STATUS, INFORMATION ABOUT THE BAGGAGE -DELIVER IT> Its 5 days since the passenger had to go out - buy clothes, make calls, was unable to give away presents at the family wedding & was faced with mental torture, agony,tension & stress. NEVER FLY AIR FRANCE again is the only words of advice I have after seeing this experience at such close quarters. Their employees do not offer any apologies, do not know or understand customer service. Put it simply AIR FRANCE DOES NOT CARE ABOUT the impact its negligence & dereliction of responsibility & duty it has put its customers through.They even gave wrong information about the flight on which the baggage was sent to Cochin. Can any service get worse than this?How will AIR FRANCE compensate the bonafide passenger?????AS I write there is NO SIGHT OF THE BAGGAGE as yet!The responsible person at the helm does not even contact the passsenger but puts employes such as Kavita to apeak to Customers as if a favour was being done!!!!

Am traveling from Italy to SFO and have 4 reserved seats on Air France 747. Never flew them, only Lufthansa. After reading this, I am willing to pay the extra money and make an extra stop in order to go with Lufthansa.

I'm due to travel to Paris in a month's time and so am trying to sort out my ticket and hotel booking. I was completely stumped when I read this blog. Not only because these experiences are appalling, but moreso because they have been my experience with AirFrance in the past. I'm numb with disbelief that it is common practice that the Airfrance staff are racist, unfriendly and thoroughly unprofessional.

I travelled through Paris in 2003 enroute to Chicago and the service was crap onwards and on the return trip. The airhostesses snapped at me; all the Nigerians on board were strip searched and gave urine samples when we arrived Paris in the most discourteous and humiliating manner; the flight was delayed on the way back from Chicago, so we were late for the Paris - Lagos flight and even though that plane didn't taxi away for another half hour I wasn't allowed to board and the staff were most ungracious; no apology was offered for the delay, the young man who reissued the ticket was so abrupt and refused to provide hotel or meal vouchers because he just knew the airline wasn't responsible for my missing the flight. Even when I offered to pay for my hotel overnight, he refused to issue me a permit to leave the airport. He had disdain written all over him. If I had been an escaped convict, I'd have simply turned myself in, just from the manner he interacted with me. I remember feeling incredibly sad that someone so young and clearly a mulatto was racist. On hindsight, I now understand what my dark-skinned African-American friends mean when they say lighter skinned sibilings or friends are treated better.

Needless to say, I spent the night in what I considered the most hospitable of the terminals,, can't remember which. When I eventually got on the flight home, I was so relieved and tired, I slept the whole time. I remember I was given a form requesting I comment on their service and finding that totally hilarious. To my mind, every single member of staff I had dealt with when things went wrong, was so unprofessional and barely exercised retraint in displaying racial hostility and a complete lack of manners.I couldn't help but wonder if AirFrance was so cheap, narrow-miinded and unprofessional, they stormed the mean streets of France, picking off the most ill-tempered and ill-mannered people to work for the airline.

My profound disgust and chagrin is renewed by reading this blog and reliving my experience, that I'm certain I'd have to be a complete raving lunatic to take an AirFrance flight ever again!

I flew Air Farce to New Delhi earlier this year from Montreal.
The first screw up was that they had a vegetarian meal for me when I had not specified one …….has anyone tried eating a vegetarian meal in a plane…..Horrid stuff;the cheapies did not have an extra regular meal on board.
We reached Paris around 5.30 in the morning ;they bussed us to the next terminal….waited downstairs in a freezing corrider till 7.30 before they allowed us into the departure lounge.
On reaching Delhi found ONE out of two suitcases was missing .I waited till all the baggage had arrived and then someone from Airfrance showed up with a list of baggage left behind in Paris.( 2 hours at the baggage clearance) Since I was going to Chandigarh ( 4 hours away) they took my address and 2 days later delivered the baggage at MIDNIGHT. Next day when I opened the suitcase I found that half the contents missing.
Calling Delhi office was told to apply at Montreal for compensation.
When I returned to Montreal I wrote to the Air France office . They graciously offered to refund me the money for the stuff I had lost BUT only on production of receipts…..Ha HA …..They must be knowing that nobody but a moron would keep receipts for clothes and other things forever????
I am going back to India next year . I told my travel agent to book me on any other airline BUT Air France…….by far the worst airline that I have flown in my life.
Parmindar Aulakh
Montreal

I am an Assistant Professor in Tourism Marketing. I have flown Air France recently and had an experience that was against everything I teach my students in terms of customer service. I flew from Hong Kong to attend a conference in Spain; and I had connections in France in both arrival and return flights. On my return flight, from Paris to Hong Kong, my consumer rights were violated and I was insulted and humiliated grossly.

When I arrived in Paris (Charles de Gaul Airport), there was only an hour and 5 minutes to my Hong Kong flight. I had to transfer to another terminal for the Hong Kong flight. In a panic, I rushed to the transfer bus, where I and many other international passengers were kept waiting with no explanation. We reminded the gate keepers about our flight time so that they can hurry about bringing a bus but the answer we received was: “you just wait.” The bus arrived, passengers rushed to it but the bus waited another five minutes so that it was jam-packed before it took off. By the time we arrived at the security check point, there were only 30 minutes to my flight. There were two long lines in front of the security check point because only two lines were open with personnel attending the scanners. The security check was quite thorough and therefore slow, so some passengers including me were anxious about missing their flights. Again, we reminded the security personnel that we might miss our flights; the answer we received was: “not my problem.” After I came out of the security scan, one female personnel wanted to search me although there was no signal from the scanner. And I was trying to hurry by saying that my flight is about to leave; her response was: “not my fault.” By this time, there were 10 minutes to my flight, I rushed to the Gate, but it was the wrong gate, the gate number on my boarding pass was wrong, so I rushed to the correct one.

When I arrived to the right gate, there were five minutes to my flight. There were one male and four female (one of them Asian) gate agents. The Asian female agent approached to me, I showed her my passport and boarding pass, but she responded that it was “finished” with a sympathizing manner. I could see that the gateway to the plane was still up and connected; so, I replied: “I see the plane is still there and the gateway is up, why don’t you just let me go?” The male agent approached to me right away and said: “Madam it is not a train you know, we closed, you have to wait for the next flight, which is tonight at 11 o’clock.” That flight was 10 hours later. It did not make sense to me at all; I tried to explain to him that we had to wait for the bus and for the security check, but he did not listen, did not even look at me. The Asian agent was looking sorry; other female agents did not even hear the problem because they were counting boarding passes. Another passenger, an elderly Dutch gentleman, came in a hurry, the agent told him they were closed, by showing more empathy. Then, the male gate agent started talking with the other agents in French. I was really upset because they did not seem to care; so I said: “The plane is still waiting, why can’t we just go?” But they did not even seem to hear me. Then, he turned to us and asked us to follow him so that he can re-issue a ticket for us. On the way there, I saw another passenger (Asian) rushing to the gate; I knew he was also on that flight because he was talking to people on the security check line about missing the flight to Hong Kong. But the female gate agents must have let him in because I have not seen him again for the rest of that day or on the next flight.

When we were being taken to a re-ticketing agent, I kept expressing my disappointment. The Dutch gentleman was so shocked that he had to take a pill to calm himself down. We passed through the security check again and went to one of the re-ticketing agents; the gate agent started talking to a dark-skinned re-ticketing agent in French. The re-ticketing agent looked at me and smiled. They chatted in French for about two minutes; let alone showing understanding, they seemed to be having fun with the situation. The re-ticketing agent asked for my passport, when they saw my passport their attitude became even worse; they looked at each other, talked in French again, with a confirmed manner and the gate agent left.

Then, the re-ticketing agent told me that my situation was different from the gentleman’s situation because his flight was late but my flight was on time, and it was my fault that I missed the flight; he said it without checking anything on my flight. I could not believe what I was hearing. In fact, the Dutch gentleman was saying that he arrived an hour and half ago but still could not make it. Obviously, my being upset with the situation and expressing disappointment coupled with my national identity were good reasons for them to treat my case differently. I tried to tell him about the waiting, but he kept saying “it is you madam, most people make it, so it is your fault, Air France is not responsible for your situation because Air France is never late.” I was not arguing that Air France was late, but trying to tell him that we were kept waiting so they should show a little understanding but he did not even listen. He served the Dutch gentleman with a new ticket and a voucher for sandwich and drinks in an apologetic manner; and he gave me a new ticket with an attitude and turned his head without any further explanation.

During this process, other customers were around as well (most probably French), they heard all conversations and kept looking at me. The Dutch gentleman and I waited ten hours that day, for the next flight at night. The lack of common sense, empathy, customer care, friendliness, courtesy, namely, those qualities necessary for sensible customer service on the part of the personnel of Charles de Gaul Airport as well as the personnel of Air France cost us several hours of waiting and physical and emotional distress.

This is the most outrageous experience I have ever had. My rights were violated; I was discriminated and quite honestly abused, humiliated and insulted by the personnel of Air France. Therefore, I wrote a complain letter addressing to the CEO of Air France, Jean-Cyril Spinetta, and demanded apology from the responsible personnel as well as compensation. I faxed this letter to several offices of Air France, including its customer service office and headquarters; also e-mailed it to several related personnel. However, to this date, I did not receive any response. I am assuming that the CEO of a national flag carrier airline must have received the news from his personnel; otherwise, appropriate business, management and marketing would have been only joke terminologies for them.

I study consumer behavior. I know for a fact that consumers usually do not complain because they feel that it would not matter even if they did because they see no difference, no corrective action or apology from the wrongdoer; so the wrongdoer gets away with it most of the time. However, I also know for a fact that successful companies do take corrective action because they care about their consumer based brand equity. Turning such negative experiences into positive ones to contribute to their brand equity is in their hands. They can turn a dissatisfied customer into a loyal one with a positive word-of-mouth. ALL needed is CARE. But I guess Air France is not one of them; THEY JUST DON’T CARE!

I have never been insulted this badly before, so I am going to pursue this matter as long as it takes. In fact, I am turning this experience into a good case to use in all my classes as well as conferences I attend. To that end, I have created blogs to share experiences with other consumers online. Hope to hear from you too.

Sincerely,

Manchester UK to South Africa. Complete mess up. Flight delayed by 24 hours as AF felt that we would miss our connecting flight from CDG to JNB, so they just cancelled the MAN to CDG by an entire day. The because of over bookings, only one of us (my partner) had a seat for the flight and I was delayed by another 12 hours. NO COMPENSATION - just told to go home, and come back tomorrow.

Return flight - lost one of the two suitcases. The case was found - and we were told that the connection time between flights was not long enough to get the case on the flight. Funny how there was enough time for one bag! Day 4 now, and still waiting for Express Baggage to dleiver the case, despite making 15 calls to chase this up. Am being told that its bacause of the distance from the airport - hence the delay in delivering the case. We live 5 miles from Manchester Airport.

Air France --- NEVER, EVER AGAIN.

Airfrance service sucks, big time. I wish Nigerians could boycott their service for a whole year. This is my second time using airfrance and both times, my luggages never arrived with me at my final destination. The second time of recent(travelled from December 14th thru December 28th 2006), took five days before I received my luggages, one bag extremely torn/destroyed beyond repair(my vacation was for 11 days, five spent without luggages). The service from Paris to Lagos, Nigeria was inhuman. Proper accomadation was not provided for people with infants(under 2 years of age. I informed them that I left my handbag in the bathroom after boarding the plane from Paris to Nigeria, and the solution they provided was to give away my seat to another passenger on their overbooked flight. So, my choices were to either give up my seat to wait for the next day flight or forgo my handbag that contained $1000.00, jewelry, medications(five months pregnant and considered high risk), credit cards, identification card e.t.c. My choice was to forgo my handbag because myself and my Husband was travelling together with our 15 month old son. Ofcourse, the flight was delayed for over two hours to wait for other passengers( would have taken less than 10 minutes to go retrive my handbag).
Overall, the service provided by the staff from Paris to Nigeria was terrible. They talked to the Nigerians like dirt and if any one would ask for anything, they took there time getting it if they came back. The staff acted like they could not be of assistance if you did not speak French.

Needless to say I and anyone I know will never fly Airfrance again is an understatement. If Nigerians could boytcott airfrance for at least a year, maybe, they might change for the better at least, provide the service that they are paid(economy was atleast $1800.00) largely for.