Air France denied my delay compensation, so I challenged them and won | Hacker News Reader

Air France denied my delay compensation, so I challenged them and won

airdisputes.com

579 pointscromka276 comments

I’ve had similar interactions with Air France regarding baggage delays (for days, not hours…). A full compensation claim for any necessities purchased while waiting for your bags requires itemized receipts. The claim must be submitted within 30 days.

Unfortunately their website refused to let me include attachments in the request form. Attaching images would cause a bunch of HTTP 500 errors. After repeated attempts, I ended up submitting it without the attachments and added a note that their website was broken. I also took screen shots of the web page, the browser network errors, and recorded all the timestamps.

After an extended radio silence that exceeds the deadline to file a claim, they responded that since I didn’t include receipts, they were only going to give 100 euros of compensation.

It took a lot of back and forth, calling customer service, learning the exact voodoo to get through to someone who even knew who to contact, and then more back and forth to be able to email them the receipts.

The end result was full payment. But only because the principle of getting full compensation and not letting this slide kept me in dogged pursuit.

Fuck Air France.

From their perspective, the system probably worked. You're probably 95th percentile of persistence among their customer disputes. Most people would accept the 100 Euros and move on.

I've essentially gifted Deutsche Bahn several hundred euros because it's like drawing blood from a stone and I was genuinely having mental health issues because of it (on top of the stress of having travel plans completely upended).

They probably have lessons from US hospitals and insurances in how to wear down people who complain.

I don't know if it applies to your specific case, but I've successfully used the DB app to get money back. It's quite straightforward! But the option to apply is pretty obscure

I have the app, I'm logged in. Please explain how to get my compensation... its costing me a lot

Can you elaborate? I have no personal experience as I don’t travel enough, but I heard the reimbursement process is pretty straightforward?

I was on a delayed ICE, and they handed forms to every passenger. I found the process straightforward.

I don't live in Germany though, so I've only had the single delay.

I've gone through the process some 4 to 5 times in the past two years or so and never had any issues with it. The delays are annoying, but I get part of my money back no problem.

It's great. You can do it in the app now and get money back fast. My colleagues also book exclusively late night trains (which are often delayed) so they get a free overnight stay in a hotel.

That can be done online or in the app nowadays and is very quick and painless. I am still not sure who to thank for that (EU legislation?), because previously it seemed to be obnoxiously tedious on purpose.

I've used ChatGPT to auto draft snotograms to these companies, I don't fight these things anymore the AI does.

It's 95th percentile that him the 100 euros in the first place.

Wow, very similar experience with a flight that had to be re-booked for the next day. They swore up and down in Paris that I’d be compensated for the hotel stay, but I couldn’t get them to commit in writing even after a two hour conversation.

It was baffling that they weren’t worn down by that point. I suppose that was their thinking too.

Idk if it’s a French thing, but you can be pretty sure that no customer-facing employee is going to engage its employer by writing anything.

They are probably not allowed to do this and if they do it anyway, it’ll probably cost them their job (or any hypothetical promotion).

It’s a cultural thing here that customers never really meet employees with powers to bypass the established process. It’s not limited to airlines but it’s pretty much the case of any company : the employee you talk to never have any latitude and you always have to escalate if you want to hope anything.

There is a reason we are known to be yelling all the time : it’s often the single and best way to escalate to a more powerful employee.

(btw, the employee isn’t at fault so the best thing to do is to be polite without yelling but insisting until you are bothering them to much in their job that they have to call their manager)

I don't think it's specifically a French thing, it's based on a wider truth: individual is powerless against the organization. Unless there's big money on the line, not many people can and will go great lengths, bear the mental burden and potential costs to go to courts and demand justice. Maybe %99th percentile would, and that's the small cost of doing business the way it is.

Companies having already established legal armies, they must know this very well. If they don't have a reason to care about your satisfaction as a customer, it all comes down to the final stand-off where the company says "so what, whatyougonnadoaboutit" and the customer loses by not being able to participate in the first place. If they had something to lose, customer services would be revamped overnight, but they don't.

I don't expect anything to change unless the will to treat the root causes magically appear one day.

> They swore up and down in Paris that I’d be compensated for the hotel stay, but I couldn’t get them to commit in writing

IMO that's a kind of life-skill that I wish was more often taught and attempted, even if actual success is rare:

A: "I see what you mean, yes, the contract does say we could royally screw you over, but trust me, we would NEVER do something like that to you, valued customer and/or business-partner."

B: "Great! Sounds like we're in total agreement about what we each expect. Just go ahead and tack on a little paragraph saying that to this document, since this process is all about ensuring mutual understanding."

A: "Oh, uh... gee, I dunno..."

A: "Of course, I understand, yet I'm not allowed to make contract changes. I'm sorry I can't help you further. Would you like a lollipop instead?"

A: "Of course, I understand, yet we have to follow our [most sacred] process. [...]"

A: "Of course, I understand, yet I don't see that button on the screen. [so it doesn't exist in this universe]"

A makes his living playing dumb 8-10 hours a day, it's their job. If B has a life, they'll probably give up at some point.

Similar rebooking: less than 24 hours before a flight from Seattle to Naples via Paris Air France says “lol flight canceled good luck as we aren’t rebooking you”

Had to scramble as flights were filling up. On hold for 45 minutes. Eventually cancel our refundable tickets and buy another pair of tickets on AF and have to make up the difference.

AF is now saying that we should have gone through the non working app to reschedule.

And to top it off the luggage didn’t make it to Naples, arriving 3 days (!) later even though there are multiple flights a day.

Plane and the staff were nice.

Ummmm... It sounds like you booked SEA-CDG and CDG-NAP as separate tickets. Huge mistake. In that case, Air France is not obliged by EU law to make arrangements for you to make it for your CDG-NAP flight.

I assume they still gave you one of the three options in [1], but that just didn't work for you.

[1] https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/travel/passenger-right...

It doesn’t sound like that at all. Nowhere in the parent comment did they mention or even imply that these were separate tickets.

Are you American by any chance? Air passenger rights are enshrined in EU law [1]. Asking a random employee to commit in writting for something that everyone knows that is mandated by law would just sound weird to them.

Of course the company may try to stall your compensation, hoping you will forget about it, but that's as far as they can go. After a couple of email exchanges they always yield.

[1] https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/travel/passenger-right...

> something that everyone knows that is mandated by law

I'm perfectly sure not everyone knows this.

I have a merchant account with Air France. They run a low-reliability baggage system that relies on people using customer service channels for compensation (versus pen, paper and regulators). Every trip something goes wrong. I rack up receipts, send in a letter, and they typically approve enough to cover most of the original ticket. Worst case, I wind up with toiletries and medication paid for a few months.

Have you ever loaded up a bag with stuff that you didn't want anymore, just to see if they would give you cash for them?

> Have you ever loaded up a bag with stuff that you didn't want anymore, just to see if they would give you cash for them?

I usually make Montréal Convention of ‘99 claims [1]. What’s in the bag is irrelevant. So instead I’m caught arguing over whether a polo is a necessary expense for a work lunch with some guy in Toulouse.

[1] https://www.iata.org/contentassets/fb1137ff561a4819a2d38f3db...

"I had a US$10k guitar in that bag and have the receipts to prove it!"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YGc4zOqozo

I'm seriously waiting United claiming in court one of these days that they shouldn't pay out for a broken guitar because it's common knowledge that United breaks guitars, so if you still flew with them and they broke a guitar it's on you.

Since you seem knowledgeable about the topic, would you say it's basically imperative to never check in something into luggage that you are unwilling to lose?

(Ie. only travel with things small enough for cabin or things insured and possible buy again)

If an airline's low-reliability baggage system loses my second-hand bought modular synth I might just have no receipts to show unlike in cases with toiletries and medication for example for one, and besides sometimes it can just be something I cannot even buy again.

I travel internationally on about 3 R/T flights a year to Europe and Asia (mostly Delta and United alliances). I fly in the US about 12 flights a year (Delta and Southwest). I always check a bag.

My bag was delayed by a day one time in 2018 when Thai Airways hustled me to a connection through BKK, but my luggage wasn’t so lucky. That’s the only time I’ve had a problem. (knock wood)

Of course, my evidence is anecdotal. But so is that of folks who are outraged (outraged!) by their lost luggage.

I reserve my outrage for the people who prolong the boarding process finding bin space for their duffel bag, roller bag, and backpack.

Absolutely.

I mean, some countries are worse than others. I have yet to come home from Mexico without my locks being cut off and bag pillaged, but other international flights have been fine.

Other who place GPS trackers on their luggage have watched it leave the airport and go to a random persons house.

Theft of checked in bags is common, and rummaging through bags is expected.

Maybe to your travel destinations but that is definitely not common.

Bags mysteriously disappearing is common enough that you probably know someone who’s been impacted by it.

It’s true: never attribute to malice that which can be sufficiently explained by incompetence. Except that we have proof of malice in many cases now that gps trackers have been commoditized.

If you don’t lock your bags, as many don’t, you might attribute a missing item to forgetfulness, but it’s just as likely that it’s simply been stolen.

The simple fact is that you should take care with what you check in, especially in countries of higher corruption, less security or less caring security.

In the states where you baggage likely has cameras on it from beginning to end is different, and probably just incompetence. It’s not like we send our best to manage bags (albeit I’m sure you can come up with some fine examples otherwise).

Even that is not enough. My wife recently had an experience where American Airlines sent her bag to the wrong country after she was forced to gate check it due to lack of room on the plane. She had paid to have a carryon luggage in the cabin, which she had brought with every intention of having on the plane with her, but was forced to check it anyway or be denied boarding at the gate.

Yeah, my last time flying i notice that delta had no problems whatsoever. But American airlines was just constantly harassing us about how "there wasn't enough room on the plane" and the last passengers would have to check their carry on's. Like what? You think that's my fucking problem? You sold all the tickets, you built the plane, but i guess i just have to let you steal my shit as compensation for this "chance occurrence" that you've engineered to happen on every possible flight. Fuck American airline, the terminal sucked, the plane was rattling like it was made out of cheap plastic, they intentionally fucked up their overhead bins to steal money we paid to carry on, and the plane didn't even have a screen! Delta was cheaper and every seat had a screen. AA sucks

> never check in something into luggage that you are unwilling to lose

This is exactly the name of the game if you travel to Argentina. Avoid getting separated from your luggage at all times if possible. So basically use a carry-on luggage.

Baggage handling is corrupt as hell in Argentina.

I had a German friend who grew up in Rwanda, each time they’d go through Paris/CDG, at least one piece of luggage wouldn’t arrive. Years later, a network of Paris people was snatched in CDG. But it keeps going on.

Had an interaction with them during a Delta flight which was cancelled. I was re-booked with Air France, told to show up at CDG and they would take care of the rest. The staff at Air France desk was infuriatingly unhelpful.

Delta isn’t any better. They rebooked me while I was in the air and I only found out when I went to my connecting flight gate to be told I wasn’t on that flight. Still waiting to hear back from them…

I've come to nickname this type of behaviour "rat profiteering" where companies intentionally either degrade or never properly implement certain processes which, on paper, do not provide to the bottom line. Maybe there's an actual term for it.

For some reason customer service has fallen into this mode in almost all large corporations.

The reason is that regulation has killed competition and the market has reached an equilibrium where margins are razor thin.

I think it's not a margins issue - plenty of good money making machines doing this - but definitely a not-enough-competition issue.

There is competition and they're all the same. It's a capitalism issue. Less expenses = more profits and that's literally the only thing that matters.

Corporations only do things for one of two reasons - money or regulation. If they don't have to and it doesn't make money, they don't do it.

Nope, there used to be a lot more airlines, all now absorbed or merged to a few select ones. It’s not a profit issue, but their ability to survive.

what is your alternative system to capitalism?

Never claimed I had one. I just don't think the current system works very well.

CEOs are overpaid and have too little liability. Corporations happily break the law and in many cases the only consequence is that they have to pay what they should have paid in the first place. Or a slap on the wrist fine that's less than they earned from the crimes.

Get rid of corruption and enforce laws properly would be a good start.

Capitalism is just a system where industry is own by private entities and is for-profit. Corruption or laws have nothing per se to do with capitalism.

Why not mail the copies of receipts via snail mail just to ensure you don't miss the 30 day frame?

Using registered post also ensures that they can't wiggle away by saying they never received it.

This is essentially required when dealing with French businesses in my experience. They absolutely will ignore anything that's not sent by registered post.

Mail them where? To do so, the company needs to provide an address where they would accept such correspondence and they may not do so.

You first ask them nicely where to send post and if they don’t give you one, you send it to the address where the legal entity is registered. In this case: 45, rue de Paris, 95 747 Roissy CDG cedex, France

Whether to accept complaints by post or not is not a company’s choice. Many countries have consumer protection laws that list non-exhaustive ways of making a complaint. When the postal means are listed there, refusing to review a mailed paper complaint could be a violation of that part of the law.

I've spent quite some time in France over the past few years and variously dealt with websites of French organisations during this time. I'm not sure what it is, but French websites seem typically to be frustratingly semi-functional. This story is completely unsurprising to me.

Can you post the email address here?

Could you please share at least some of this voodoo? I am French so this may be useful :)

I'm American and once traveled through Europe with my then girlfriend, now wife. We had two (!) flights canceled for mechanical issues -- one on TAP, the other on United. Both cancelations resulted in unplanned overnight stays in Lisbon.

The folks at the service desk at the airport provided us information about our legal rights after we got off the plane, and my wife and I immediately filed claims. Happily we're both attorneys so this sort of thing comes naturally to us.

Between the two of us and two canceled flights, we recovered about USD $2400, which more than paid for our airfare. Honestly, not a bad deal!

I know people who purposely schedule transatlantic flights with iffy connections and bad on-time records specifically in order to maximize their chance of EU/UK 261 compensation.

What's the compensation under EU/UK 261? Based on a quick search it looks like it's a 250 euros/pounds for a continental flight, and more if it's a trans-atlantic flight. In the latter case, the delay window is up to 4 hours, which seems unlikely barring some natural catastrophe, which would make the delay ineligible for compensation. What sort of a person has the income to spend on transatlantic flights, but is willing to put up with all that hassle for $250?

In the latter case, the delay window is up to 4 hours, which seems unlikely barring some natural catastrophe

It's unlikely that one flight will be over 4 hours late; but the delay time which matters is based on when you reach your final destination. For example, a few years back I was flying LHR-YUL-YVR; the flight from London to Montreal was only 1.5 hour delayed, but that was enough that I missed the last flight of the day from Montreal to Vancouver, and qualified for compensation based on my arrival in Vancouver being 10 hours late.

Indeed. We flew from Stockholm to Hawaii and the SAS flight was late out of Stockholm, which cascaded to us being a full 24h late (same flight next day) to our destination in Hawaii. We got reimbursed without a problem and since we were traveling with an infant it was actually kind of nice to get a free full nights sleep in a hotel near LAX...

As far as i remember it is up to 600 Euro.

I my case I recieved the max compensation because i got delayed a bit over an hour on the first leg of the flight due to problems in loading luggage, which made me miss the connecting flight overseas. Total delay was 10hours. Took them almost a year to pay me back (Lufthansa)

We received €600 each for a flight out of OAK where the plane was late, followed by really late, followed by completely cancelled and rebooked for the next day. Ended up leaving 25 hours later than planned and losing a day from the vacation, but it was a nice payout given that the seats were only $200 to start with.

I did the same for a delayed, then cancelled flight.

I might not have bothered, except they had us waiting for almost 12 hours in the airport, then another 12 hours the next day.

The delay window is difference in arrival time. If you have one flight rescheduled you have a pretty good time of making that unless there’s 10s of flights per day to the same destination.

I recently got £520 for Virgin Austin-Heathrow being late. That's the post Brexit version of 600 euro. Plus food and accom. Virgin were quite good about it and paid up straight away. Computer problem on the plane - they tried restarting the computers but the thing wouldn't work.

IIRC, it does depend on distance and time, and it maxes out at about $600.

What about the US, I faced a mechanical issue traveling from Austin (Texas) to Vancouver (Canada). The result was 10 hours delay (rebooked on a flight next morning), a free night at the hotel. The hotel was so terrible though (a 4 star, but I found greasy light switches and bugs in the room, that I turned around and went back sleeping in the airport, I didn't want to bring home bedbugs by any chance.

Should you also get compensated economically for this? I never pursued it since they brought me back home without me paying anything else. I guess I did have to pay for a breakfast

I recently had an issue with Air France as well while trying to change a "flex" ticket. Flex tickets are just tickets whose dates you can change for no fee, all you pay is the airfare difference.

This summer, I needed to change my Flex ticket. So I went online and found a new flight that would cost me just 13 EUR in airfare difference.

As I was about to pay for the fare, the website told me "a technical error happened" and that I needed to call customer service...

So I called customer service, told them my issue and the flight I was looking for. The agent on the phone told me there was indeed an issue and that he fixed it and that my total fare was 69 EUR. To which I answered that on the website the fare was 13 EUR and not 69 EUR.

The agent insisted that the fare was 69 EUR and there was no other possibility. So, as I was talking to him over the phone, I went on the website and tried purchasing the 13 EUR fare... and it went through.

I am now convinced that 1- AirFrance is purposefully preventing people from changing their fare online (unless someone on HN tells me they had a different experience) 2- that the agent on the phone did something that allowed me to pay for the fare 3- that the agent or someone was going to pocket out the 56 EUR difference.

I might be wrong on all 3 points, and these might just be pure coincidences, but I am used to airlines being scummy, so I'll easily believe my current narrative.

edit: I so happen to currently have a Flex fare for a flight in December of this year. I went online and tried changing the fare. And of course the website keeps telling me "Sorry, there are no flights available for this combination of departure airport, arrival airport and travel dates. Please try again.".

I took a look at the XHR call and sure enough, although this time it's hidden from me, the XHR response is:

  {"errors":[{"message":"unexpected error occurred","locations":[{"line":2,"column":3}],"path":["flightOffers"],"extensions":{"code":"3100","exception":{"name":"AviatoError"}}}],"data":{"flightOffers":null},"extensions":{"aviatoCacheControl":{"hasPrivateData":true}}}

> 2- that the agent on the phone did something that allowed me to pay for the fare

I think you are overestimating the powers of telephone agents with respect to website errors. Their abilities tend to be extremely limited and anything like you describe would have to be escalated to a dedicated team that would not be responding in real time like you describe.

> 3- that the agent or someone was going to pocket out the 56 EUR difference.

Definitely not the agent. Could you imagine if agents had the ability to pocket any money from customers? I think the “or someone” you describe is AirFrance and the system wasn’t fully showing the CSR the right info.

There are sometimes sales commissions, but the CSR's main goal is to get you off the line as quickly as possible so that the next person doesn't yell at them for being on hold forever. I can't speak for Air France, of course, but I can't believe they would want to make the call longer to make 56 euros. If they quoted you 14 euros on the website, they would be most happy in the world where the software accepted your 14 euros and you never called them.

I'm guessing the original commenter just hit a bug. They should have retried some database call, but didn't in that one codepath, and it cost them the entire request. It happens.

Speaking from experience as a frequent flier, I encounter more errors trying to check out than I do successful flight bookings.

The general state of airline IT reliability is atrocious.

He's also overestimated the reliability of Airline booking systems.

IT for every airline, creaks and groans loudly.

Websites are very modern interfaces to the Sabre system that was originally developed in the 1950s. The way it was described to me at the time I was working in the travel industry (20 years ago, yikes!): Sabre is essentially a command-line system, which means the API-like interfaces that have been grafted onto it over the decades are not nearly as stable and robust as we'd like them to be. I'm sure they've improved tremendously since I first used them, but the entire system is still based on very old technology that just wasn't meant to do what we're doing with it. Connect to it with an airline agent's terminal, though, and it's quick and reliable, just as COBOL-based banking systems are.

When did they finally get rid of the green screens?

They haven't. That's why the system feels like it's stuck in the 80s.

About 1 in 8 of my AA flights comes with, “When you reach the gate please say your last name and seat number, our terminal isn’t scanning right now”

> anything like you describe would have to be escalated

What they described seemed plausible if one assumes malice (not that they should). Naively, I suspect your take is more accurate but nothing as explained requires escalation if Air France is indeed engaging in the described behaviors.

I was booking an Air Canada flight once and the website wasn't working. Called in to book and they added on a $30 call center booking fee. I explained I called because the website wasn't working, and they told me I should have called in to technical support for that. I swore at them and hung up, I think I eventually found a way to book online. The depths of depravity these airlines will go to to screw customers know no bounds.

As other pointed out, this is probably just down to terrible airline IT. I don't know if AF/KLM are worse than others but it's remarkable just how bad it is.

Recently they had a bug where once you selected a seat for one flight in a booking you were blocked from any later seat selection in that booking. The only way to fix it was to call customer service.

I'm lucky enough to have access to the platinum line. You get to talk to people who are pleasant, competent and have sufficient authority to actually get things done. This should be the experience for every call to customer service but I guess it would be too expensive.

Since I can't edit my original message anymore:

I think we can probably exclude malice (from the agent at least), like many commenters pointed out. It is, however, infuriatingly shady for AirFrance to not address these issues. Doubly so because at the end of the day it benefits them.

Many many customers aren't tech savvy, won't place a call, will pay the fees, or downright abandon trying to get their money back because of how difficult AirFrance (and other airlines) make the process. And at what point should _not_ fixing these issues be labeled "malice"?

AviatoError? F-ing Erlich.

THE Aviato?

To be honest, their websites fails spectacularly more than half the time, even when trying to look up a flight.

Funny enough, it’s even worse when abroad, and easily fixed by using a VPN that exits in France.

or legitimately there was a server error and you just happened to hit the right "try later" window lol

I could have been more clear in my story. I tried multiple times over a few days, before caving in and calling customer support. The agent 100% did something that fixed the error.

Given the general incompetence it might as well be just their lookup of the flight that suddenly validated it (udated their cache maybe?)

Probably, but I doubt it's as intentional as you suspect, if only because that would require a level of competence I don't think they have (Hanlon's razor and all).

It's important to observe that Hanlon's Razor does not exclude malice; it merely reminds us that incompetence may be the better explanation.

Then we can further observe the possibility for a third form of the apparent dilemma: organisations tacitly and systematically weaponising their incompetence.

Weaponised incompetence is definitely at play here. Intentionally writing bad code - or worse: code paths that intentionally show higher fares that CSRs can trigger - would put them one whistleblower away from serious regulatory and PR consequences.

However, a legitimate bug/lack of attention to detail coupled with a dysfunctional remediation process will effectively achieve the same outcome without leaving conclusive evidence for a regulator to prove malice.

In this case there was a bug that got sidestepped when the CSR looked up the account (maybe a cache got flushed?), the bug is most likely known but is rotting away in some Jira backlog because making the system work well (the work they should’ve done in the first place) wouldn’t give anyone any promotion (or worse - will expose their incompetence) while “raise spam letter frequency by 10% to increase engagement” is scheduled into the sprint because the product manager wants their praise for their upcoming promotion.

Never attribute to incompetence that which can be attributed to apathy.

Had a similar experience with Turkish. Free flight change but the website didn’t work and every time I called them I got insane price differences that were almost the same as a full flight ticket. I ended up going to the airport sales office and doing it there (still did not come cheap)

Qatar also offers a “5% premium” when you request a voucher instead of a refund. But hey the premium is on the price before some base fees, so the voucher total is almost exactly what you paid, not 105% as you’d expect.

https://silicon-valley.fandom.com/wiki/Aviato

I had the exact same experience except I paid the CSR fee…

The post concludes that because Air France eventually agreed to compensate the passenger, they must have been lying to the passenger initially.

I think it's more likely that they decided it would be cheaper to pay the claim than to continue denying it, which would incur costs on their end to provide documentation and defend its denial.

Happens all the time with legal settlements. It's not an indication of actual guilt.

Actually, I have been through this and they will absolutely lie, and gaslight you with all kinds of nonsense.

I have a series of screenshots and recordings where United would change information on their official app from, say, insufficient crew, to crew rest, to blaming weather. Had to take them to court (their delays cost us thousands) and won thanks to demonstrating how they altered their own information to blame everyone but themselves.

> I have a series of screenshots and recordings where United would change information on their official app from, say, insufficient crew, to crew rest, to blaming weather.

Is very close to one of the many ways Best Buy got in trouble. Back in the day, their website would detect if you were looking at the website from a store-associated IP address, and display different pricing.

So when you shopped around at home and found your $200 hard drive, went to the store and saw that it was $300, the clerk could pull up the website and say "oh, no, you were mistaken, see?"

That started falling apart when cellular data plans became common place and people turned off Wifi and said "Well, huh, when I'm not connected to your network it shows a lower price. Please explain."

(Then there's the retailer specific SKUs... "Sorry sir, this hard drive is a WD8TB7200-BBY, not a WD8TB7200-AMZN, so it's not eligible for price matching"...)

I took an airline to the small claims court last year, and they settled when it entered the mandatory arbitration phase. They never really had any good reason for denying the claim, and the evidence (including emails on the day of cancellation) supported my compensation claim.

I think the modus operandi is simply to deny and obfuscate everything. That probably works 95+% of the time, as it takes a certain amount of motivation and effort to actually go through a small claim (even though it is ridiculously simple these days). My wife told me she would never have bothered.

So, they probably ultimately save a lot of money by doing this, even though it is annoying and nefarious.

> I think the modus operandi is simply to deny and obfuscate everything. That probably works 95+% of the time

Is this why many credit cards offer no/few questions asked travel insurance in case of airline fault? They know they’ll get a refund and they know how to work the process

Everyone has a KPI, including the airline’s general counsel

It's funny, I've had this issue with one of the most cost-cutting airlines before (Ryanair). And they just paid right out. A lot more than the ticket for the flight sector had cost, too.

And it was due to the airport being closed for inclement weather. Not even their fault.

People love to rag on Ryanair but they get the job done admirably for the price you pay.

I travel a lot, so I’ve had quite a few disputes with airlines over the years. My experience statutory compensation is that a lot of airlines train their frontline staff to think it simply doesn’t exist, and that you have to escalate to get anywhere. I’ve also experienced a few that will ignore your first few escalation attempts before finally giving in and paying up. I’ve never gotten all the way to court, but I’ve always been left with the impression that certain airlines are simply adopting the approach of making it as tedious as possible hoping you’d give up.

Do they lie or have they set up a system of such intentional incompetence that no individual drone actually has to lie?

I think the correct perspective is that they lie as an organization. Sure individually maybe no single person is obviously lying, but as a whole they certainly are.

What was their defense in court?

I've worked on the software side of airline ticketing. I would bet any amount of money's that they were lying. Not just AirFrance, every airline.

They also drag their feet on paying their software contractors. The company I worked for also had a digital adslvertising agency department. There were multiple times we had to threaten to pause all their Google and Facebook advertising campaigns until they paid. One time we actually had to do that, we had an email that payment was sent about 10 minutes later.

This is a lesson that large corporations will always assume laziness on the part of the unwashed masses in order to cut costs. An individual doing their homework will put a wrench in their plans.

If we had stronger consumer protection laws, corporations wouldn't be able to hide behind all these obstacles they themselves create to generate profit.

The default should be "customer gets the refund" and the corporation needs to prove the refund should not happen.

Imagine being able to do a one step dispute with a consumer protection agency. The business in question would have 30 days to challenge in small claims court in the local jurisdiction. Consumer gets a letter in the mail about the determination with no effort beyond the initial dispute.

No underfunding the customer service phone lines, hoping to wear down the consumer. No hiding behind a self constructed obstacle course.

The corporate entity can run through a ninja warrior obstacle course to deny a refund.

Laziness is a poor choice of words in this instance - a combination of lack of knowledge about the laws, perception of low chance winning against the goliaths that are airlines and a (probably correct) cost-benefit analysis favoring inaction is more accurate.

> I think it's more likely that they decided it would be cheaper to pay the claim than to continue denying it, which would incur costs on their end to provide documentation and defend its denial.

Except...

they already stated they HAD investigated and reviewed things, and that's HOW they found that it was "ATC delay". So they already had the documentation...

... unless they never even investigated.

You assume that it's the same type or level of documentation, official communication with regulatory offices might require a lot more work than answering a passenger.

It’s not an indication of guilt in a legal sense, but non-liable parties often become less rational about the financial stakes when they believe the law is on their side, even if only to protect their reputation. At least in my experience. Anecdata, not a lawyer, etc. But I have been a recipient of a nontrivial settlement larger than negotiators were planning to offer, where the previous case history was in my favor. And I have seen the opposite play out when the same other party apparently sincerely believed they were in the right.

Settling is generally legally neutral, but it’s not inherently exonerating in a social sense either.

If this was a case of turning up for arbitration, sure, that's lots of paid staff time wasted. But if they already had enough information to provide to the customer service to provide a summary to the customer, it shouldn't be that much harder to provide the raw info to ANAC. It may not be fully automated, but... At few hundred $ per claim, an existing semi-automated process would surely pay for itself if their objections were true, right?

It's likely way more complicated in practice, but I don't immediately buy the "it's cheaper not to fight it" idea, if the request is just for information they already have.

There is another possibility: because the first leg plane was late, it missed the pushback at 09:40 and then again 09:56 and the ATC put the plane at the end of the queue for takeoff until 10:48. ~~Though I can't imagine Lisbon to be such a busy airport to have an hour-long queue of departures, who knows.~~[1] In any case, if ATC denied takeoff/pushback because Air France missed the schedule, AF could not blame the ATC.

[1]: haha, couldn't be more wrong: "It is one of the most congested airports of Europe" according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisbon_Airport

I mean, another option is that they have a policy of legal council checking the documents even if they have them, so it's more expensive for them.

Had a similar story with British Airways. My flight was cancelled last moment and I was rebooked for the next day - changing my direct flight to an inconvenient connection and arriving to the final destination over 24hrs late.

When I filled out compensation form they first lied to me about who operated the flight: it's not us, it's our codeshare! Once we sorted it out they lied about the distance: your disrupted journey was less than 1,500km, so here is less then half of your compensation (for a flight from London to San Francisco). I eventually got my full compensation, but it took several months of back and forth.

Airlines will absolutely lie to you, in writing, about the things that are trivial to verify. I guess there's no downside to them - in the best case some people may settle for no or smaller compensation, in the worst case they pay what they were supposed to pay anyway.

AF also tried to pull the codeshare thing with me once. Didn't want to go around in circles with customer service and found it easier to initiate litigation. AF then hired a big law firm to defend the tiny case.

A week before a scheduled court hearing their lawyer calls me to negotiate. I tell her there is nothing to negotiate about, and she agrees. We chat for an hour anyway which was surely billed to her client AF. I receive full payment two days later.

Haven't booked an AF flight since.

What were you chatting about for an hour then?

Which jurisdiction was this lawsuit filed?

Interesting, I had a comp case with BA but it was very easy. Likely because they were clearly at fault (mechanical failure) but all I had to do was fill in one form and I had my money 3 months later.

I think the experience is circumstantial and definitely depends on how 'obviously' in fault the airlines is. All in all I came out with a profit of £200 but can't say 24 hours at an airport is worth it honestly.

If you want to see how enshittification truly hurts customers, simply check twitter during a storm at, say, Newark or O'hare. Thousands of people stranded in lines with airlines providing one, maybe two CSRs to service them – children crying, parents weeping, family reunions and weddings destroyed, business meetings cancelled.

It is a complete embarrassment how weak consumer protections are in the U.S. for travelers.

Unable to check Twitter due to enshittification.

This made my day :)

Is it CRS-bound though? A storm is a storm, nobody is flying anywhere anyway.

What's the solution though?

Laws similar to those EU laws mentioned in the article.

You can definitely go further than that - a strong consumer protection agency that actually enforced these rules would help more - but having those rules in place would at least help people like OP who are willing to stand on their rights (and in turn that creates incentives for airlines to do the right thing), and is already proven to be a viable approach.

>Laws similar to those EU laws mentioned in the article.

Doesn't seem to stop Air France.

There's ongoing work to update the regulations to remove a lot of the loopholes. For example, some airlines like to try to claim that pretty much any delay/cancellation is caused by "extraordinary circumstances", even though court decisions have limited when that excuse can be used.

The efforts to clearly define some of the vague parts of EU261 have been held up by intense lobbying from the airline industry.

One important addition that has been suggested would be to force airlines to publish the cause of disruptions, so that they can't lie about it later when passengers are trying to claim compensation.

OP managed to get a decent amount of money after a bit of hassle, which is a lot better than how it works for US domestic flights.

These EU regulations do not apply when a delay or cancellation is due to the weather.

I really don’t see a problem here, you can’t just predict weather 100%, so why blame the airlines?

They do mandate some compensation if it's a sufficiently long delay due to weather? (Such as hotel rooms overnight, meal comps., etc...)

Essentially, telling airlines and airports that they need to move their provisioning levels much further from "the minimum we can get away with when everything works OK" and significantly closer to "able to deal effectively when the shit hits the fan".

Net margins being what they are for US domestic airlines (single-digit percentage on average), the additional resilience will most likely be reflected in higher prices for the consumer. Of course, that may be worth the tradeoff.

Slack in the system and higher ticket prices to support it.

For the last half century of commercial flight, however, the airline passenger has shown nothing if not a desire for lower airfares at any cost.

Lowered costs shouldn't mean criminal abuse though. If I eat at a fast food restaurant, I expect crappy meat, sure – but I shouldn't be held hostage in my booth until they decide to get around to delivering my food.

I don't support allowing criminal behavior on the part of the airlines.

But it's extraordinary hyperbole to suggest that too few customer service reps to quickly handle the needs of many travelers during an adverse weather advent amounts to criminal abuse.

Transfers of under an hour with AF/KLM are a complete crapshoot; if you actually need to get to your destination on time (as opposed to somewhere within half a day of that), don’t use them (otherwise, go for it).

For several years pre-Covid, AF/KLM would sell you evening tickets from Moscow SVO to Paris CDG with a transfer of IIRC half an hour to an hour and a half in AMS, and they virtually never made it, putting you up in the airport hotel until the next flight in the morning. It wasn’t a bad deal if you expected the delay (I still carry around one of the very nice foldable hairbrushes they gave out in the hotel), but I don’t understand how that could ever be a sensible business decision.

I’ve never had issues with KLM (aside from the one time when there was a warzone in flux directly beneath their flight path, I can kind of forgive them for that).

AF and especially CDG though. That whole place is a shitshow. At least Schiphol allows you to run to wherever you need to be instead of cooling your heels waiting for the shuttle to arrive.

I just had a delayed flight out of ATL and missed my 2pm connection at CDG, next flight was 9pm. Delta gave me 15k sky miles, better than nothing I guess.

Should have booked with an EU airline and you would have gotten 600 Euro...

They might still be able to if they were sold a codeshare by an EU airline: https://simpleflying.com/eu-261-applied-to-non-eu-carriers/

The connecting flight was AF, but the delayed flight out of ATL was DL.

I've got a 1 hour transfer with KLM at AMS (LCY -> NRT). Not sure if it's worth cancelling it.

Transferring in these EU mega-airports like Schiphol and Frankfurt is always a nightmare.

If they falsely deny the claim, they should have to pay double or triple damages. Otherwise there's nothing stopping them from denying every claim until you fight them hard enough to force them to pay (and in fact it seems like many airlines do just this).

Mandatory fines in the seven figure range would maybe be a sufficient deterrent, on account of most people probably not even filing claims, and less people disputing a denial.

The penalties need to be extremely harsh to make up for this imbalance.

Another solution would maybe be to not require people to claim by law, and make it mandatory for airlines to pay this out themselves. Combine with airlines having to self-report every flight and its on-time status to a governing body, which can then audit their honesty in this regard.

The current system, while better than nothing, is in all honesty inadequate.

I've been saying this for years. Improper denials or non-payments (like when the other driver's insurance went silent after agreeing on what they owed me) should carry a penalty multiplier and a high interest rate beyond that.

If improper rejection saves them money they'll do it. The system has to be engineered that proper behavior is also economically sensible behavior.

Triple damages, that reminds me of something … if you happen to live in Massachusetts you might be able to send them a Chapter 93A letter (which entitles you to triple damages if they don't attempt to settle in good faith)

This may be the difference between arbitration and court. My guess is the arbitration company doesn’t care if their biggest client is always lying or not but a judge might just ruin your attorney’s week if you give them lies to present in court.

The best advice I can give people who struggle to claim something from an airline and get exhausted of getting rejected, use flightright.com. (No - not affiliated with them)

I had a claim rejected and initially it was rejected when flightright attempted to claim it. It went to court and even after commission I ended up with more money than I paid for the tickets.

All I had to do was sign a few documents and have patience.

I used a similar service when I was told by KLM (same company as AF) that a cancelled flight of mine was outside of their control (it wasn't).

It was a special case because they cancelled the first out of 3 connecting flights and rebooked me onto a flight leaving the day before on that very day (had to stop what I was doing and rush to the airport to make it).

All other flights were on time and I technically arrived at my destination on time.

Luckily there had been a prior case that was tried at the EU court and the court ruled that you would get compensation if you end up leaving early.

After KLM rejected I decided to use one of those services as it seemed like a complex case to argue and lo and behold, about a month later I got my compensation (minus the fee I had to pay the service).

As far as I understand they have a group of lawyers and immediately threaten with legal action. I wouldn't be surprised if the airlines simply auto-approve the majority of claims made by these companies as that's cheaper.

I'd still try and claim the 'normal' way first as the fee for using such services is quite high (20-30%).

From their FAQ:

> How do I enforce my rights in case of a flight problem? To enforce your claims, it is advisable to seek professional assistance.

This makes me reluctant to trust them or their advice.

I'd expect an honest answer to be "you can totally do it yourself, but we will help you for X% commission".

Probably just there for legal reasons. They do mention their compensation on the site however.

> If successful, we transfer your money to you immediately. If the airline refunds your ticket within 7 days, our service is free of charge. After that, you only pay if we are successful (commission 14-28% plus VAT). For compensation claims, the commission is usually 20-30 % (plus VAT).

> If the airline refunds your ticket within 7 days, our service is free of charge.

I think they know that just never happens.

If it's under 7 days it's probably because the airline is just less sketchy and it's super easy for them to get the money for you. The ones that take longer are probably the ones that are a bigger pain in the butt.

I have used a similar-sounding service called AirHelp, and it was absolutely worth the (tiny) effort on my part. I believe they took 1/3 of the compensation I got, which seemed very fair since they got through the request process and denial and all the way to lawyers sending letters to each other: I would probably have given up with nothing.

Wow. Just checked them out. Hadn't heard of them before. Will definitely be bookmarking this one. Thanks.

If you’re having issues with UK 261 claims, one surefire way to move things along (beyond escalating to the national agency, which may be more or less effective depending on the country of departure) is to take the claim to CEDR.

Many times simply filing with CEDR will result in the airline paying out the claim; otherwise, if you have a legitimate claim, they’ll be ordered to pay in a relatively reasonable timeframe.

There’s a lot of great airline specific information on EU/UK 261 issues on FlyerTalk.com in the forums if you ever need to conduct additional research.

I just had a friend that flew United, was going to a honeymoon in Argentina. Got caught up in the problems from the past week, they delayed his flight by 6 days (all the rebookings filled up every day going forward)! They refused to compensate him. He had to cancel the whole thing and they wouldn't give him a dime. How is that legal? They claimed it wasn't their fault, so it's not their responsibility to refund. I told him to at least try to get compensated with points (which they will normally do, but it can take a month+ for them to do it and requires a lot of bitching.)

I've had my flight delayed by 36 hours before and AmEx did a full claw back of the fare, since I missed a major event I was going to. If I hadn't had AmEx I'd have been SOL. The Airline in my case also claimed it wasn't their fault as well, though we had a 4-hour delay before because of a landing gear problem. They blamed it on air traffic control and said they couldn't do anything to refund me. Very lucky AmEx thought otherwise, otherwise I was out $2k. The airline industry is getting away with murder, which considering they've been saved by the government several times at this point is just infuriating.

> If I hadn't had AmEx I'd have been SOL.

Although I wrote about Article 19 of the Montreal Convention below which would have applied in your case, I should point out that in practice as a heavy traveler I mostly also rely on AmEx. AmEx has saved my bacon so many times I've lost count, in one case they basically literally saved my life by providing me a translator and guaranteeing my deposit to be treated in a hospital for 4 days while I was traveling in a foreign country one time. They've helped cover damage to rental cars, and flight cancellations, and all sorts of other things throughout the nearly 20 years I've had my card.

While knowing the law is a good thing, I honestly think for us Americans the most important thing is having a competent travel card and knowing what your coverages are and using them. AmEx is a godsend when dealing with shady airlines, rental companies, and hotels.

As much of a bad rap as credit cards get (and rightfully so in many cases) having a good travel card is essential if you travel relatively often. I think Capital One is fairly good about this type of thing as well. That being said...such a thing shouldn't be required for most of these instances. Airlines are just screwing people. I understand the frustration people have. I've been lucky to only ever have had minor delays (sans my example,) but people that get really screwed over have every right to be angry and demand the FAA do something.

You don't need a credit card for that. The travel insurance is just a perk with some US cards (EU cards have very few perks!). You can also get it if you just pay for it.

I have a mandatory amex card from work (in my own name no less) and I hate it, because it's so useless in Europe. Taxis often refuse it (or the reader is suddenly 'broken'). Apparently they charge much higher commission than the others, one driver told me. Restaurants frown at it. Shops don't even accept it. The only place it works reliably is hotels. I'm sick of having to use this thing and my work makes a fuss if I use my own local card for work trips. Some exec in finance probably gets a great kickback for that rule.

For going to the US it's apparently great but I've never been there in my life and in Europe it's really tough. Especially Eastern Europe where they just laugh in your face when you pull it out but even in the taxi queue at Charles de Gaulle Paris you really have to beg to get a taxi to accept it.

And I don't think the corporate version comes with the travel insurance. Because we have international SOS for that. They wouldn't have got that if it wasn't needed because they aren't cheap. Which is something I do have very good experiences with in all my corporate travel by the way. The few cases where I've seen colleagues need it their service has been exceptional.

I am going through a similar case here in Canada, and our government body (the CTA) responsible for handling claims against the airlines told me this last month:

"We continue to receive a high number of cases. There are more than 46,000 cases waiting to be reviewed.

The wait time between when you submitted your case and when it is reviewed can be more than 18 months."

I have written proof that they changed narratives partway through, but given the long delay, I'm not holding my breath.

AA delayed my flight out of LHR once by just under a day. No compensation beside food vouchers and put up in a hotel. EU rules applied to them since it was a flight operating into/out of the EU at the time. Reason for delay? Staff shortage due to a (false) fire alarm at their local crew rest hotel meaning the crew could not operate the flight.

They claimed such an incident was outside their control and unforeseen. Yet it happened several times in the year odd before my flight. I would have thought they have substitute crews on standby (maybe from an alliance pool?), and at the very least not put all their crew in 1-2 hotels.

They told me fire alarms were unusual. I sent them a UK gov report showing hotel fire alarms happened hundreds of times in the prior year. No change. I no longer fly AA- but I don’t expect any US carrier to act differently. Sadly.

Interesting - the argument being that getting woken by a fire alarm precluded work the next day?

I did some work for a IHG and was told that one of their Sydney hotels hosted all staff from a particular airline when they were in town. Seems like putting all your eggs in one basket?

Well you don't want an exhausted flight crew, trust me. Those rules are written in blood.

Yeah, I’ll absolutely take the delay over exhausted crew.

It’s just, the airline never tells you why the flight is delayed, it’s just ‘delay’, and you tend to assume incompetence instead of anything else.

Yes me too. But in a big transit hub like London, with thousands of hotels, and a continuous stream of flight movements, I would expect them to be prepared for such scenarios with relief/standby crew.

Flight crew can't work if they have young kids? Or puppies? or noisy neighbors?

I’m sure the airline can get a much sweeter deal if they show a high volume of rooms booked. Although the costs of an entire days worth of flights being cancelled because of a errant fire alarm seems like a high cost to pay, I’m sure they gamed the numbers out and it makes financial sense for them in the long run

Yeah, they didn’t receive their minimum rest hours or something along those lines.

My suspicion is the crew were up partying and had a smoke break inside which set off an alarm.

Air France are complete scumbags. Unfortunately, they are typically the best/fastest option when flying with Delta to Europe.

This thread is amazing. I've flown Paris-DC at least ten times over the past three years. (Yes, my carbon footprint is stupid.) Airfrance was systematically the best experience I had. One other company fucked up my connections so bad that the eventually offloaded me to an AF flight. The first company also lost my luggage, and it was airfrance who led the search effort to find it and send it back to me...

As for EU companies being shit, I can only laugh. Customer service might be apparently "friendly" in the USA but fuck you if you expect actual compensation for delays or cancellations. There are just zero regulations, so they don't care. They will however smile and call you buddy while explaining to you that they won't do anything and you better not complain again or they'll charge you extra fees. Which I guess has been dubbed as "customer service excellence" elsewhere in this thread.

I’m glad your experience has been positive. It only takes one big fuckup to ruin a reputation.

In my case, my mother and sister were left stranded in CDG during Covid after being denied boarding to the US (EU travel ban). We were unfortunately not aware that the ban also applied to transits.

AF customer service in CDG kept redirecting them and provided absolutely zero assistance. They didn’t even help them book a return flight! In the end, I had to book them a hotel online for the night (in the airport) as well as a return flight to their origin. Obviously, the online complaint I filed with them went straight to the trash, so I was never compensated.

The AF agent at the departure point should have picked this up as it was most certainly the first thing they check for when your final destination is the US.

I have never had such an experience with any US airline. Even Spirit compensated me for delayed luggage without a fuss.

But the absolute worst airline I’ve ever dealt with is Royal Air Maroc. I would probably think twice before flying with them for free..

> You better not complain it they’ll charge you extra fees

You sound like you have an axe to grind. As an American I’ve never experienced this from any company.

I have, on the other hand, had a flight cancelled and got a free hotel, rebooking and meal voucher automatically without talking to customer service.

> You sound like you have an axe to grind. As an American I’ve never experienced this from any company.

Considering the terrible service we get from US air carriers, we certanly all do have "an axe to grind" with them.

I can agree with original poster that service level from United and Delta has been consistently worse than Swiss or Air France every single time (and that doesn't include the paranoid amplified security theater on US carriers).

> had a flight cancelled and got a free hotel, rebooking and meal voucher automatically without talking to customer service.

That's often the minimum the EU airlines will do, in order to distract their passenger from the €250-600 compensation to which they are entitled.

I'm surprised the employees of American-run airlines aren't demanding a tip to board the plane...

In all seriousness though, I've traveled between the US, EU, and Japan in the last 5 years, and haven't had any problems, luckily. The one place where I see the US really sucks compared to the others, though, is security: going through TSA is not a very nice experience, and having to take your shoes off is pretty stupid. And having to leave the line or throw your (reusable) water bottle away if there's water in it is idiotic, and only the US does that AFAICT. Going through security anyplace else is a much better experience. This of course is not the airlines' fault.

The other big difference between these places/flights I saw is what kind of passengers you're sharing the plane with; American passengers are more annoying to be around, in general. But that's not the airlines' fault either.

I stopped flying AF when they started flying perfectly good albeit temperamental airplanes into the ocean floor. If I wanted to assume that level of risk I'll take my chances on some fartbox submarine. The rigor of their pilot training has since been raised into question.

IIRC, they've since expanded their training to "the basics of flying a plane without the autopilot holding your hand" and "Here's how to not stall at 35,000 ft, and here's how to recover if you do."

The latter part about high-altitude stall recovery was, IIRC, previously absent entirely.

https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/the-long-way-down-the-cr...

The stall was created by a completely inept pilot in the first place...

Air France and Malaysia Airlines are on my 'nope' list and the basic incompetence in AF447 is why.

MH had a truly awful year that year, but it's hard to blame them for MH370 and certainly not for MH17. Besides that, I think their track record is on the better side among global airlines.

Yeah, Malaysian is not a bad airline. Both of those losses were really bad luck that could have, and have, happened to any airline.

Not just saying that, I've flown with them twice over the last year and another booked in a few months. After SingAir and maybe Thai, I think they're among the best in the region.

LionAir and AirAsia, on the other hand, I wouldn't get on even if their tickets were free...

Based on my reading of the wikipedia article, it doesn't seem pilot under-training was a factor. The lawsuits seem to have centered on improper maintenance by air france. Is there any reason that makes you think that air france pilots' training is particularly worse than the industry average? Sure, pilot error was a contributing factor in the crash but that's the case for many crashes, so much so that if that were a reason to rule out airlines there wouldn't be much airlines you could fly with.

The second half of this paragraph is pretty damning summary of the performance of the stick-holder (I can't even call him a pilot).

> In a July 2011 article in Aviation Week, Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger was quoted as saying the crash was a "seminal accident" and suggested that pilots would be able to better handle upsets of this type if they had an indication of the wing's angle of attack (AoA).[264] By contrast, aviation author Captain Bill Palmer has expressed doubts that an AoA indicator would have saved AF447, writing: "as the PF [pilot flying] seemed to be ignoring the more fundamental indicators of pitch and attitude, along with numerous stall warnings, one could question what difference a rarely used AoA gauge would have made".[265]

I think there is a high percentage (probably a majority) of 15-hour, pre-solo student pilots who could have broken the stall of AF447 well above 30K feet.

Another reference that goes a little more into it, but short of reading the official report: https://degreesofcertainty.blog/2019/05/08/air-france-flight...

> The pilot at the controls that night was Pierre-Cédric Bonin. Although he had clocked up many hours in an Airbus cockpit, his actual experience of manually flying a plane like the A330 was minimal. His role had primarily been to monitor the automatic system. The time he had spent manually flying would likely have been focused on take-off and landing. So, when the autopilot disengaged, because ice crystals had begun to form inside the air-speed sensors in the fuselage, he didn’t know what to do. The fly-by-wire system downgraded itself to a mode that gave Bonin less assistance. With the safety net gone, the plane was now liable to stall if conditions allowed, and Bonin inadvertently proceeded to create those conditions.

...

> The Air France 447 pilots ‘were hideously incompetent,’ says William Langewiesche, author of the Vanity Fair article

I'm struggling to understand how you came to this conclusion. I urge you to read the official report from the BEA (which is parroted in the Wikipedia article). The report clearly paints a very different picture, that of two highly credentialed imbeciles in the cockpit that bungled the response to a routine minor emergency and deviated from procedure (the captain was asleep with the younger copilot and a relief pilot at the controls). They subsequently forgot how to fly an airplane without automation (or never learned how), and made a series of unbelievable errors. The captain burst into the cockpit with just enough time to realize what had happened and curse them out in French (they were beyond the point of recovery and realized their fate) and the rest is history.

From the Wikipedia article:

On 17 April 2023, Airbus and Air France were both acquitted of manslaughter.

BA is just as bad. The legacy European flag carriers are now all basically Ryanair with a veneer of prestige but the same number of fucks given about customer service excellence.

As a regular traveller I have to laugh and disagree. Can’t deny the level of service for flag carriers has dropped but the level of service with Ryanair is an order of magnitude worse.

And as another regular traveller, I have to disagree with your disagreement. It feels like every other BA and Lufthansa flight I get on has issues while I travel to my hometown with RyanAir (due to necessity) frequently and have only had issues due to weather.

From what I've seen online and from acquaintances, RyanAir's quality varies depending on the route while traditional airlines have just in general become worse over time.

They're actually worse than Ryanair. They have an attitude problem.

Ryanair will happily sell you whatever privilege you desire. Priority boarding, seat selection, a nice sandwich.

With the legacy airlines you often need to build up points with them first. I much rather fly Ryanair because it's less hassle to get what I need.

The problems people have with it usually stem from wanting something but not wanting to pay for it. Bringing too much carryon. Trying to sit together as a family without paying for seat selection and then hassling other passengers on board to move. Stuff like that. Just pay the fee, it's still cheaper than the legacy airline would have been.

They are usually significantly more expensive than United for all SFO<->CDG flights.

But significantly lower risk of getting your teeth busted.

It's European airlines in general. It's what happens when the only airlines are flag carriers that don't have to worry about competition because their respective governments will keep them in business.

It’s interesting because you could say the same about Asian carriers and yet Singapore, Cathay Pacific, JAL etc. are all quite proud and beloved.

Because they have competent local competition. ANA is very evenly matched with JAL. Same with HKA and Cathay Pacific. Even Taiwan has China Airlines (flag) and EVA.

JAL was privatized in 1987.

Air France-KLM, Lufthansa and BA are also privatized.

I thought I knew what interacting with empathy-less career government drones was like before but I had my eyes truly opened by Air Canada.

Air Canada was privatized in 1989.

They’ve converted into empathy-less career non-government drones.

One way or another they have no incentive to be anything but terrible to their passengers.

>> It's what happens when the only airlines are flag carriers that don't have to worry about competition because their respective governments will keep them in business.

Governments cannot provide aid beyond what a reasonable investor would do. The current European Commissioner for Competition (incumbent since 2014) has had particularly strong focus on that. Several flag carriers that got unreasonable subsidies went bankrupt after they were forced to pay back subsidies.

Beyond the European Commission, competitors can challenge approved aid, and they have done so, and they have sometimes won: https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/eu-court-...

Europe has plenty of competition in the airlines space?

I believe it's thanks to that competition being mostly low-cost that we've now got a race to the bottom in terms of customer service.

Customer service was always terrible in Europe

The US legacy carriers were the first "full service" airlines to bring in extra charges for bags, food, seats etc.

Luckily delay compensation exists in the EU, otherwise there would be no difference between them nowadays.

Its not just US and Europe in the world. Heard of Asia?

I despise Air France perhaps like few other companies. [1] With that said:

> Why? Because the burden of proof falls on the airline and they were presumably lying to me.

This is a non sequitur. Dispute resolution schemes like these (Ombudsman etc) are rightly set up so that the customer cannot under any circumstances simply be dismissed by the heft of the corporation. Going through any kind of dispute resolution process the corporation will often look at the cost of winning and decide that it's simply cheaper to give the complainant what they want.

It's the height of arrogance to come out of this thinking anything else except that Air France chose the cheapest option.

[1] Air France once delayed a flight my mother and my siblings were meant to be on by 8 hours and 56 minutes and then told my mother that if she did not board then she'd lose the money for all the tickets despite our plans being obviously destroyed. There was no compensation of any sort. We would only have been eligible for a refund if they had taken 9 hours delay. In tears, she got us on the plane.

Not to teabag on Air France, but I was curious about how bad the delay is at the Lisbon airport.

1. Toronto Pearson International Airport: 51.9%

2. Montreal-Trudeau International Airport: 47.8%

3. Frankfurt International Airport: 44.5%

4. Humberto Delgado Airport (Lisbon): 43%

5. London Gatwick Airport: 42%

6. Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport: 41.6%

7. Munich International Airport: 40.1%

8. Manchester Airport: 39%

9. Athens International Airport: 38.5%

10. Vancouver International Airport: 37.8%

Fewest? Japan Haneda: 13.6%

I guess I'll have to watch out for layover at these airports. Hrm.

>Fewest? Japan Haneda: 13.6%

This doesn't surprise me at all. (Note: Haneda is in Tokyo)

What's worse is Tokyo (and much of Japan) gets a lot of bad weather from typhoons during the summer. But the weather doesn't disrupt things very much. Most of these other places (like London, Frankfurt, Vancouver, etc.) don't have this problem, or other problems with natural disasters (Japan gets earthquakes all the time), but they still can't keep things working smoothly for some reason.

I wonder if it's the same as with the Shinkansen: they are not running when there is a typhoon, and stop when there is an earthquake, but typhoon/earthquake induced delays/cancellations are usually not included in statistics (at least the ones you generally read in the press). So it's possible that due to typhoons more than 13.6% of flights are late in Haneda, but they are simply not included here.

TL; DR A shortcut in most countries to hiring a lawyer is to loop in a regulator. (You still need to be able to write a coherent, non-ranting complaint letter.)

> You still need to be able to write a coherent, non-ranting complaint letter.

I’m pretty sure that would be right up GPT4’s street. It has done wonders when we had some trouble with some hotels.

> Just to be clear: ANAC requested clarification from Air France, and instead of blaming weather or ATC, AF simply rolled over without challenge. Why? Because the burden of proof falls on the airline and they were presumably lying to me.

Just because big corp X disagrees with you doesn't mean they're all baddies. Maybe they really were lying to you. Or maybe whoever's job it was to document the weather issue didn't document thoroughly enough. You don't know, and shouldn't just presume mal-intent.

Forgive me, but when it comes to corporations and a fair number of people, I’m going to assume mal-intent in matters of money.

Reality is corporations are made of people, just like you. In fact you may know someone who works for a corporation.

"if you are dissatisfied with the airline's reply, you may resort to judicial or extrajudicial means."

What exactly is "extrajudicial means"?

Rustle up a posse, the airline knows what it did.

Horse heads are my go-to.

It means you can bring them into arbitration. Judicial means a lawsuit, arbitration/mediation is extrajudicial. While "extrajudicial" can mean other things, they're not advocating vigilantism against the airline no matter how satisfying it may be for the CSR on the phone to hear about some executive's car getting keyed in the parking lot.

Still, throwing a tantrum on Twitter often does help a lot and it's also extrajudicial.

Hire a man with a very specific set of skills…

Arbitration.

ITA (former Alitalia) lost my baggage in transfer and delivered it four days later. While their phone support in Italy assured me I could send in the receipts for essentials and a change of clothes, their US office completely ghosted my inquiries and receipt scans.

I filed a complaint with US Department of Transportation https://www.transportation.gov/airconsumer/file-consumer-com... received a written confirmation from DOT that yes, they agree what ITA did was wrong and that my case was being forwarded to the airline.

A few days later a manager who was suddenly "informed of my disappointing experience with ITA" reached out and asked for the receipt scans to be sent directly to him.

Not that it inspired any confidence in ITA processes (there was no ticketing system, just a message to the guy's corp email account) but I did get my check a month or so later.

I've found that contacting regulating bodies/government agencies is often the best way to get a resolution when a company is shady. They will rollover easily once they get a call from the government telling them they are in the wrong. In Canada my phone company raised my phone plans prices randomly. Companies are typically required in law to give proper warning to the customer of such changes. Their "warning" was a single month of notice, and they put it on a tiny section on page 7 or 8 of the phone bill. The bills are digital and I have it set to autopay the same amount every month. So of course no reason to read an 8-9 page bill every month.

They had my email on file, as well as my phone number. They send promo message offers all the time to my email and phone number yet used none of those avenues to inform me the price would be increasing.

Who knows if their fine print method of increasing prices is legal or not, but I contacted the relevant agency in Ontario, Canada and they contacted me a week after the ticket for details. They indicated it doesn't sound like I was properly informed and they would reach out to the phone company. Soon after I get a call from the phone company. They set my bill back to the previous rate plus applied a $10 discount per month for a year.

Great for me, but ultimately I still hate it. Because they know it's wrong to do, but they do it anyway because there isn't much competition. They know most people just won't say anything and will suck up the extra cost or not even notice for awhile. Even if it's $5 a company wrongly took from me I will go out of my way to get it back. Because if everyone lets them get away with it then they will keep doing it.

I used to work as a major European lowcost airline customer rep and handled Eu261 requests. All disrupted flights were being collected to an excel sheet and let me tell ya, the "Settle" or accept claims category lines always seemed arbitrary. Think 60-80% Deny category on each batch of disrupted flights. Made up and simplified example:

Flightnumber123 - Paris to London - cancelled due ATC disruption --> Decline

Flightnumber124 - Paris to Eindhoven - cancelled due ATC disruption --> Settle

The real kicker: if claims came through a lawyer/solicitor we had to escalate to "Senior Agents" due to "procedural differences", as in the company actually had to pay 80% of time which was an open secret in the office. (but with other shady stuff like waiting for customary UK solicitor's 'Last Request' type of emails to eventually accept the valid claims).

Same thing happened to me except it was with air Portugal. They would never reject me but they would always say something like, “call this number and they will help you” and no one would ever answer.

The day I submitted a claim to the right governing body they sent me my money haha. 900 bucks so I was pretty hype.

I wish there was a huge decision tree covering all possible scenarios for flight delay/cancellation, it is very hard to know exactly whwt to do in such cases.

There kind of is. https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/travel/passenger-right...

And a little check box with the initial claim form:

[ ] Check this box if having your claim rejected will make it your life's mission to appeal, cost us exponentially more money in customer services resources, and you're broadly willing to sink hours of clerical work into getting the full claim approved, even if it means you're effectively making less than Singapore minimum wage.

If you tick the box your full claim gets approved from the start.

I think the airlines and various other industries prefer the current trial by ordeal.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trial_by_ordeal

Remember, you cannot improve the customer service of these companies. The only way they “get better” for them to fail, collapse, and be replaced by new companies. Every compensation claim brings this brighter future closer.

I'm trying to do the same with United. They kept in the airport from 9 am to 5 pm (they kept delaying the flight hour by hour until they cancelled) and they say they didn't need to provide me a hotel because the flight was cancelled due to external forces (outside their control). I think it was a lie. The plane was in the gate they did not have the crew to fly it. I'm Brazilian and that happened in the USA, so I'm not quite sure how to proceed. But I'm thinking about sueing them in the small cases tribunal.

Sorry if this is not completely related to the story, i just felt like getting it out of my chest.

These days I just use a third party service to sustain these claims for me. Not worth the time, effort and anxiety in dealing with these companies. I used AirHelp (they're a german company) and received compensation from a bunch of Wizzair flights. Airhelp has an easy online form which always works, you can upload documents, screenshots, etc. And they keep you posted with periodic emails on the outcome. This is not meant as an ad for them, I'm genuinely satisfied even though they kept some money as part of their commission fee.

Took me 6-7 months to get my compensation from Etihad after I was bumped off my flight for technical issues, and had to stay in transit (in a hotel albeit) for 24 hours.

Funnily enough I just had a similar interaction with Lufthansa but the result was much different, within half an hour of filling in the relevant form I got the reply with the proper compensation amount and within 2 days entering my bank details the transfer was complete. Good to have the view on different airlines

Lufthansa moved my girlfriend's flight by an entire day and then when calling in, the worker even admitted it saying she could see she was never informed. She found this out upon arrival to the airport. They never did anything for her. After she kept the tickets leaving a day later, on one of her legs she missed a connection and had to spend the night and they refused to do anything for her. Not pay the hotel not pay a late fee, nothing. In fact, they didn't even get on the phone with here at the airport.

Lufthansa has changed flights on me and never done anything for it and basically just said "cancel it and take back the 15% which is taxes which we'll return to you". At the time I didn't have the bandwidth to do anything else. They never even paid and it's too much energy to even get anyone to acknowledge this.

Fact is Lufthansa also is a shit organization. The correct thing is to either (1) with minimal effort send official complaints to government agencies with documentation, (2) to hire one of those companies to just do it for you, or (3) go zen and just stop caring that companies are breaking their contracts and ignoring their legal obligations.

Sure sometimes it works, but no Lufthansa isn't one of the good airlines. They're just as corrupt as the rest.

Is there a reliable, not too biased source/website to read about what airlines are best to take for what routes?

For example, I’ve flown BA and AA to LHR direct & it was an awful flight (tiny seats & super uncomfortable) & would’ve paid more $$$ for a better airline but I couldn’t find a reliable website to help me understand who generally has better seats (pitch, width, etc) and all that.

I’ve resorted to my own spreadsheets for flights (I know…) where I put the different info down & then compare prices. It’s not awful but damn, it’s a bit time consuming.

For context, I’m not an overweight individual I’m just willing to pay extra to not be crammed into a tiny seat with no pitch for 12+ hours.

SeatGuru isn't perfect but it'll be right more often than not with the seat dimensions, especially on popular routes.

Realistically I think airlines have figured out that they're mostly competing on price, not seat quality. Very few people price out flights and then choose the one that's $20 more expensive based on what the seats are like.

As general rule, always fly KLM the atlantic route. Houston is business class only with normal fares. I.e. you can sleep through.

Super interesting. So, Houston to LHR or is it Houston to Amsterdam? I’m from the southwest so Houston ain’t a bad jump since I usually have to go through LAX.

Schiphol - GW Bush via KLM.

Looking at the flights and seat map, looks like most of the seats are pay to upgrade for the extra legroom.

Is that what you mean with like 40% of the plan having extra legroom?

Options seem to be:

“Standard legroom (79 cm/31 in) Conveniently located in the front, directly behind the Economy Comfort zone Quick access to your seat during boarding”

“Enjoy extra legroom (+10 cm/4 in) and recline (up to 5 cm/2 in) Be one of the first Economy Class passengers to board Conveniently located in the front of the Economy Class cabin”

Awesome, thanks.

Get into credit card churning and use the points to fly business class.

Yeah, I’ve looked at that and done the points guy, transfers, spend X in 4 months get XX points but was hoping there was a general guide to flying in economy without losing your fucking mind lol

Similar experience with TAP. Delayed bags by 1 week out of LHR. - Submitted 10 support tickets. - Created a well crafted PDF with meticulous detail of receipts, ticket numbers, costs, justification for costs and problems encountered with the websites. - Found 4 emails for them and sent an email every other day using a script

Got full payment about 6 months later.

To be fair they got hacked that year so had some bigger issues.

But it seems that the attachments and media uploads on websites is a common bug/tactic.

Lot of work for $658, but I am glad the OP did it and shared it!

What do you mean lots of work? They replied to a few customer service responses and then sent an email with some proof to the relevant authority and got paid. That's a good amount of money back for a fairly small amount of work.

Honestly I'd spend a lot of time even fighting to get $5 back from the company. Sometimes it's just about the principle of the matter and not wanting to be another person they exploit for cash. Because if they do that to 10,000 people that is a lot of extra money they just scammed. I don't like letting companies get away with abusing me like that.

> My itinerary allowed for just an hour to disembark the first segment, go through immigration in Paris, then board the international segment. This connection was going to be tight—doable, but tight.

Yeah anyone who has been to CDG (Paris) knows that that is very much not doable in normal circumstances. CDG is honestly one of the worst airport experiences of my life and many others say the same. I happily pay more for flights to avoid going through paris.

We had a delayed flight (24 hours) from Frankfurt to Christchurch, New Zealand. As the compensation is a sliding scale of time and distance we were the maximum.

It did take about 4 months to get the money, but, Singapore air were very good (well, they didn't deny anything at least).

Hurrah for European legislation, and hurrah for Frankfurt airport not letting take offs after 11pm so that even if they could have fixed the fault in time it would have been too late :)

I am a very frequent traveler, and I want to correct one misunderstanding that the author of this blog has in their About Us page which I think is a more general misunderstanding. Most people believe that you are not entitled to compensation from a US based air carrier for delays or cancellation of a flight, this is true only for domestic flights. For any international flight on a US carrier or originating in the US, you are entitled to compensation under Article 19 of the IATA Montreal Convention of 1999, as the US (along with 130 other countries) is a signatory to this treaty and treaties in the US hold the same force of law as the Constitution. Nothing an airline states in its policies can override the law, and this is as much the law as anything else.

Per Article 19 "The carrier is liable for damage occasioned by delay in the carriage by air of passengers, baggage or cargo. Nevertheless, the carrier shall not be liable for damage occasioned by delay if it proves that it and its servants and agents took all measures that could reasonably be required to avoid the damage or that it was impossible for it or them to take such measures."

Where this gets a little tricky in the US is that FAA regulations (each ICAO nation independently enforces regulations related to international agreements) specifically give airlines a pass for weather related irregular operations (irrops). The trick is that airlines LIE all the time about this, such as the big blow-up around Christmas last year with Southwest Airlines where they initially claimed it was caused by weather and denied compensation, however later started offering compensation after getting called out by the Department of Transportation. The actual issue was caused by a computer systems problem that affected their crew scheduling software. So just like in the OP, airlines will lie. If you can prove their statement is a lie, you can often get just compensation.

The other challenge in the US is that the FAA doesn't take any actions on behalf of consumers in these matters, unlike the role of civil aviation authorities in Europe under the EU treaty. The FTC also rarely gets involved, even though as a consumer-protection item it falls under their purview. If an airline refuses to pony up under Article 19, you usually only have the option to sue them in the US.

So, to summarize:

1. You can be compensated for a flight delay or cancellation in the US /if/ it's an international flight under Article 19 of the Montreal Convention (MC99)

2. Compensation is not required per FAA regulations for weather-related delays/cancellations

3. Airlines often lie and claim weather when it's not weather-related, if you can catch them they'll often pony up.

4. If the airline denies your claim, your only recourse is a lawsuit, however it can be handled in small claims.

A lot of words in this comment, but the convention says they are liable for damages. You have to prove and quantify damages before you can ask them to pay for damages. You better believe their lawyer isn't going to agree to the extent of the damages. And you'll also have to prove that they didn't take all reasonable measures to avoid the damage. There's a reason everyone thinks that in the US you can go get fucked if you want compensation by an airline: because for all intents and purposes, it's true. This is incomparable to the EU.

You don't need a lawyer or to get through a lawyer to file a claim, and damages are pretty straightforward to prove in most cases.

As a simple example, I had a flight that was headed to Mexico City that was cancelled, they rebooked me the next day. I had to pay for a hotel room, and my hotel in Mexico City missed check-in so I had to pay a penalty, plus I lost out on one day of vacation. I submitted receipts and a justification, and the claim was paid.

On another occasion my luggage was lost on a business trip and I had a meeting the following morning which required dress attire. I went to the nearest mall and had them rush me a suit to wear as similar in cost/quality to what I had packed. I submitted the receipts and I was reimbursed for the cost of my suit. I did eventually get my baggage 4 days after arrival, but I was reimbursed for all of the clothing I had to purchase, my toiletries, and other necessaries.

You are quite correct that this is nowhere near as good as Europe. It doesn't compensate you for the inconvenience, and it doesn't guarantee compensation as a matter of law, and it puts the burden of proof on the consumer more so than the airline. But it's something, not nothing, and most people don't realize they even have this avenue available to them. If you are traveling internationally from the US, you have at least some legal protections and I think it's important people know what protections and rights they have and that they make use of them, that's all.

> and treaties in the US hold the same force of law as the Constitution

They hold the same force of law as federal legislation. They’re still subservient to the constitution.

You’re correct. The Constitution calls treaties part of the “Supreme law of the land”, which has apparently been interpreted to be equivalent to federal law. I stand corrected.

The airline I flew with just ignored my compensation request. After an initial automatic "Thanks, we're working on it", there was no replies or response.

When I finally took them to the local CAA (Civil Aviation Authority) the responded very quickly. The CAA had already investigated that specific flight due to complaints from other passengers.

> They know you wont chase them down in courts, and there’s no automatic oversight.

Every ticket sold should incur a delay reimbursement tax, and a disinterested third party should process claims. Management fees can be taken out of the tax pool and the balance refunded to airlines when they file at the end of the year.

Given the time and effort spent to get compensated, the amount should be significantly increased in the law.

Next step: open a criminal case for attempted fraud with your local prosecutor.

I find it outrageous that we simply let it slide that companies lie to avoid fulfilling their legal obligations, and count it as a victory if we can get them to pay up eventually. Where are the consequences?

When in Italy, my train was delayed by more than two hours due to bad weather. I got an email saying I might be entitled to compensation. So I completed a simple form regarding my itinerary, and it confirmed it, and processed it automatically.

Note the legislation was passed over a decade before the pandemic decimated the airline workforce.

I'm surprised more flights aren't canceled.

We have had a few more close call mid-air incidents, and I would expect more mistakes with such a thinned out team.

It seems that the tickets indicate the flight was purchased through Delta. Wouldn't it be necessary to address these claims with the carrier from whom you bought the ticket, rather than the carrier who operated the flight?

No, the claim is to the operator, not to the ticker originator. These are claims related to "irregular operations" in aviation speak, so are the responsibility of the operator. This has weird impacts sometimes, but in most cases the operator and the ticket originator are the same for most people so doesn't much matter.

I did the same with Icelandair, they didn’t answer within the allowed time, raised the issue to the Icelandic air controller, and suddenly they decided to answer emails. Our flight from Canada to Europe and back became free.

I should’ve done this a few years ago, I lost out on some nights because they had to move my flights up because of a weather event. Didn’t get anything besides “free” flight change.

Now I know better

ANAC doesn't fuck around. And they're great with e-mailing in English. So formal though :-)

I've had a similar issue with KLM, and once ANAC is involved, it's over.

Related: what experiences have people had with middlemen services that handle the EU claims process for you?

Wonder if this person is still able to use Air France?

aka, I'd kind of expect them to be banned now

I wish US airlines had to follow similar regulations. EU passenger rights are awesome.

I actually think this law might have some bad unintended consequences if people are able to recoup fees in earnest. The last thing I think we want is a plane trying to rush off without necessary checks.

Airlines already have a pretty good incentive structure to fly people out on time. Not sure it needs a time pressure on top of it.

I'm about to submit a delay compensation claim with Air Canada. Any tips?

Does a similar law exist in the USA?

It looks like there are no provisions for double or treble damages. Look no farther for the reason airlines deny automatically.

The moment I saw Lisbon, I instantly rolled eyes.

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