It was about 5 or so years ago when my wife and I decided to travel to Korea to visit the family and have a nice long vacation. We booked a flight with Air France from Frankfurt to Seoul via Paris. Everything was fine in Frankfurt; we boarded our flight and touched down in Paris not long after leaving Frankfurt. The time to get to our connecting flight was a bit short but we didn’t worry too much because the gates were supposed to be close to each other.
After landing in Paris we found out that for some reason, without information, we had parked at a gate on the other side of the airport and that we had a long walk ahead of us to get to our next flight. Charles de Gaulle Airport is not a small place as we discovered soon and it seemed to be in the middle of construction because we entered and exited 3 understaffed makeshift security check points. Nobody seemed to care as we repeatedly stated that we were late for our flight, we weren’t the only ones…
As we finally came running to the gate the plane had already left. The staff there just gave us a condescending look and told us to go downstairs for arrangements. We waited in line for about 30 minutes until a bored agent just handed us a few pieces of paper and told us where to wait for the transfer to the hotel. Hotel? The guy next to us, a Korean business man, nearly lost it at the news that he had to stay over night to get the next flight and so did I. The bored unfriendly staff just told everybody that there was nothing they could do and that we had to stay at the hotel.
So we waited outside and were picked up by a small bus to transfer to the hotel which was apparently owned or exclusively rented by Air France for people missing their flights as this was very common. The place was decent; we spent the night and enjoyed the breakfast and were transported back to the airport the next morning. We got on the plane and expected to be served food and drinks, as we were used to from prior flights with other airlines, but nobody showed up.
Dehydration and starvation kicked in and so I walked up to the kitchen section of the plane to find the entire flight crew sitting there chatting and having a good time. After I asked for food and drinks the FA looked a bit puzzled and just pointed me to a corner where they had positioned a few carts with all sorts of sandwiches and beverages, self service. What an experience; it’s one thing to get bad service but getting nothing at all is totally new to me.
On the flight back home we knew how things rolled and immediately grabbed what we could get from the kitchen section to have enough for the flight before they ran out again.
Survival flying with Air France.
Alex
210
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
The French put you up in a decent hotel? And then you asked them for some food on the plane and they actually told you where to find it? And you are complaining?!
ROTFLMAO!!!
no really ROTFLMAO!!!
Wow, there was ten minutes of my life I'll never get back.
and that is why it is also called Air Chance.
None of this is bad, bro.
not surprising, the french are horrible managing anything, just looks at what hellholes their former colonies are