Mistreatment of passangers by Air France US
We, passengers of Air France, demand an apology and compensation for mistreatment by Air France Company.
On December 2, 2007 we had a flight from Barcelona Airport (BCN) to Newark, New Jersey (EWR) with a stop in Paris CDG Airport.
For no apparent reason flight AF 1149 was delayed. When many passengers mentioned about making the connection in Paris we were told not to worry since the delay is only for several minutes and in any case the connecting flights crews would be informed and proper arrangements made to coordinate.
Prior to landing in Paris an announcement was made on the plane about connecting flights. The passengers who needed to make connection to go to Boston and Atlanta were told that Air France representatives would meet them. For us, bound to Newark, only departing gate was announced. It should be noted that all these flights were scheduled to depart at about the same time with about 50 minutes scheduled to make the connections.
Upon arrival at CDG Airport we were not taken to a gate (though the airport seemed not to be busy at the time) but rather were dropped in the middle of airfield and loaded into buses. After long wait and several stops on the way for no reason we were taken to a very remote part of a Terminal and were told to go to another Terminal. Boston and Atlanta flight representatives were at the arrival point to escort those passengers to their flights.
Newark bound passengers were directed to leave secure area. We had to cover distance of near a kilometer long and needed to change levels several times. At the end of this run was another barrier we had to go thru – check point where our luggage was X-rayed, our jackets removed, belts taken off, etc. How is it possible to complete all this within 50 minutes allocated for making the connection?
When the first group of passengers reached the departing gate of Flight AF 018, we were told that the gate is closed and they did not know that more passengers are to be on the flight. We were told that the Barcelona flight agent did not inform them (even though our checked-in luggage was at the gate already). These and other lies were told to 20 � 25 people who were forced to complete a �marathon� just to be told that their flight is gone. Some of the older passengers were experiencing heart problems as a result of the rushing.
One of the passengers who was thought to be flying alone was offered a seat on the plane but when he indicated that he was flying with his family he was told that he had to switch to another flight. It made it clear that the plane could still be boarded at that time.
It became clear to us that we were involuntarily bumped out of the overbooked flight to Newark and forced to switch to undersold flight to JFK New York. It should be noted that the New York Flight was delayed by more tan 30 minutes.
We object this kind of treatment from Air France.
We hope that this incident will be thoroughly analyzed to prevent this from ever happening again. That is a kind of story New York Times would
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Date: Saturday, 06-Sep-08 20:00:30 CDT
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Complaint #: 184260
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