Air France Flight

A question about : Air France Flight

Hi,

Not sure if this subforum still get's visited. Maybe I should have posted it into the Air Force Thread?

I'm well aware that the Airline usually doesn't offer compensation in case of Volcano Attacks, but I am hoping that my case might be special.

On 20 Dec 2011 I wanted to fly from LHR to STR to visit a part of my family for Christmas. My flight was over Paris - so the full routing was LHR - CDG & CDG - STR.

On that day almost all flights got cancelled. I believe Air France had about 6-8 flights to Paris on that day - and all somehow got cancelled except mine - it kept on showing as delayed. The flight was supposed to fly at 8:20 am, but after a delay of 673 minutes (thanks flightstats.com!) we got on the plane.

Another problem happened: Our parking spot was full and we had to wait 4h on the runway without the possibility to go to the toilette and without getting food from the airline. So that's why our plane took of at LHR at 5:46 pm (we got on the plane already 1h before) an officially landed at 10:03 pm. It was intense and it was incredibly hard not to pee yourself - and still we were realy thirsty. Ha!

Of course that resulted in me being stuck in Paris, because obviously my connecting flight left without me in the morning. If I was given the chance I would have obviously preferred to stayed in London - instead of being stuck in Paris.

- They must have been aware that I can't continue my flight to my final destination. Then why even put me on the flight in the first place?
- I believe it was possibly a wrong decision by the airline to take that flight if it wasn't possible to get off the plane at CDG. Almost all flights got cancelled on CDG on that day and magically mine was the only one that took off - it seems as if they forced it.

Who knows! I want to know because if it's possible to make a complaint in this case, because I really hate Air France and will never fly with them again, because of what happened then:

After spending a night at the hotel Air France overbooked the flight to STR. Because of that it was delayed for another 90min. I was bored and asked out of curiosity at the Airport in Paris on the next day:

Hey, could you check if my luggage is on this flight?
Air France: No sorry, Sir. We don't have it on board. It appears to be missing.

My luggage was lost! On the next day when I took my CDG-STR flight my luggage didn't appear on the baggage carousel. I had to file a missing luggage form at the airport and when it was found a few days later it was not brought to my home, but I had to collect it at the airport.

I spend Christmas without any fresh clothes and couldn't give any of my presents to my family members. When I received my luggage there wasn't even a little we are sorry, note (KML does that, and adds a 20€ flight voucher - and they are even owned by Air France).

Of course I wrote a complaint about the delayed luggage and after a standard copy and paste responses I ended up with an eMail that asked me to send a written complaint with all the receipts (for compensation - but obviously I had almost nothing as my family members provided me with the essentials) to Paris. That seems so backwards - why no eMail? I already loose 2 pounds when I send that letter. So my compensation wasn't really worth it.

So, do you think I can get compensation, because they flew me to Paris while knowing that I won't be able to get to STR?

Can't believe you read that all! Thanks for your time.

Best answers:

• Edit! !!!!. There was no Volcano. Haha. SNOW!
  I'll delete it in a sec.
• Did they pay for the hotel in Paris? If not, then certainly you can claim the various costs.
  Delayed delivery of checked luggage is a standard term in most travel insurance. All that the airline will pay is for what you spent on emergency purchases (against receipts).