In July of 2005, I was on an Air France flight from Charles de Gaulle, or however it’s spelled. Anyway, I was 17 and coming home from a wonderful 3 week tour of France, Germany, and Austria. Unfortunately, the return home was muddled up a bit, as the London tube bombings occurred two days before we were supposed to fly home. Needless to say, security at the airport was heightened, which I appreciate.
When we got onto the tarmac, another delay occurred due to mechanical problems with the aircraft. It was a relatively short delay, only about an hour. After that we were able to take off. I rarely sleep on flights, but I was exhausted and fell asleep.
I woke up to one of the college chaperons tapping me on the shoulder. He asked “Have you ever been to the British Isles, cause that’s where we’re going.” I looked on the LCD screen in front of me and changed it to the map (A360’s are sweet). Sure enough, the red line following the aircraft had quite the sheppard’s hook, and the aircraft was facing Ireland. Just then, an announcement came over the intercom, but was in French (I only spoke English, German, and a touch of Russian). After the announcement finished, there was much excited talking amongst the French passengers, which understandably made myself and the 19 other Americans I was traveling with wary. Thankfully, one of a group of French students we had befriended during the tarmac delay promptly explained to me that there were four men on the flight that were on the no-fly list, and we had to return to Paris to kick ‘em off.
Now, I have never been fearful of a Frenchman, but after landing in Paris, four agents of the French GIGN (hardcore government police, think US Marshalls mixed with Delta Force) came onto the aircraft. All were over 6 feet tall, wearing tactical fatigues that were all black save the GIGN insignia. All I could see on their belts were their sidearms. I could see no cuffs, batons, OC spray, flashlights, gloves, or other equipment. They might have been on their other hips, but all I could see were the firearms. These guys were serious. I had an aisle seat and they walked right by me. They escorted four men off.
We all had to disembark, and we had to wait in the terminal for all luggage to be taken off, the plane to be restocked and refueled. We had to go outside, visually ID our luggage, and then get back on the aircraft. Over 13 hours of delay, without weather being a factor.
Tagged as:
air france,
delay & cancellation,
police,
security
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
Tagged as:
air france,
hotel
This was supposed to be the beginning of Mom and my great adventure. But boy did it start off wrong! I drove to Dallas to meet my 83 year old Mom and my sister Becky; she drove Mom down so she wouldn’t have to drive 150 miles by herself. We stayed the night at a Super 8 hotel near DFW, went to an outlet mall and ate dinner at Joe’s Crab Shack. We had fun but Becky was very jealous that she wasn’t going with us. If she had known what was going to happen to Mom and me the next two days, she wouldn’t have felt that way!
We got up early Saturday morning, August 2, and ate our free breakfast. Then Becky headed home to Herford OK and Mom and I caught the shuttle to the airport at 9:30 AM. We needed to check in at 10:00 for our noon flight to Budapest.
Our Lufthansa flight had been canceled because they were on strike so our tickets had been transferred to a Delta flight and it went to New York City. When we got to the airport we found out the flight was delayed because of bad weather in New York City. They said it should be leaving at 2:00. We didn’t worry too much about that because we would be able to make our connection, but the flight kept getting more delayed. We finally left at 5:30 PM!! We got to NYC and had another 2 hour delay after a 3 hour flight. We finally got on a flight that would get us to Paris France at 11:50 AM and we would catch an Air France flight to Budapest at 3:50 PM and arrive at 5:30 PM August 3 (which is 10:30 AM in Texas). We thought we had plenty of time to check in and check on our luggage and relax. We had now been in airports and airplanes for 24 hours!
We thought things were straightened out and the rest of the trip would go alright; but then we got to the Charles De Gaul airport in Paris and of course there were major problems. That will teach me to think. We went to check in at Air France but, before we could get on our flight to Budapest we were told that we had to get a hard copy of our ticket from the Delta office. Well, that airport is huge and no one seemed to know where the Delta office was. Mom and I (I should probably add here that I use a rollator walker to get around, so you can see the absurdity of this whole situation) were running this way and that trying to find it; I know we walked at least 10 miles and spent an hour in an elevator going to one floor and going where we were told & being sent somewhere else and back to the elevator. I kept trying to get Mom to sit and wait for me but she was afraid that I’d get lost (which I often do) and forget where she was. That would have created a major problem for her because she doesn’t speak French. I was so afraid that Mom’s heart problems were going to act up and she was going to go into congestive heart failure and die right there. We ended up spending over 7 hours in that airport! At one point we stopped these 2 girls to ask where we could get something to eat. All of the restaurants were down some steps, so they offered to get something for us. We said great and they asked what we wanted, then said it would cost $40, so we gave it to them…….we were desperate. But they came back with the food and our change.
While we were waiting for them Mom started crying, she was so tired and frustrated. I hugged her and let her talk about it and before you know it, we were both laughing. We finally made it to Budapest at 1:00 AM but luckily the ship hadn’t left yet. Our 15 hour and 15 minute flight to Budapest ended up taking us more than 36 hours and our luggage didn’t make it with us! It could be the luggage was tired and needed to rest somewhere in the nether world.
Tagged as:
air france,
airport,
baggage,
delay & cancellation,
delta airlines,
senior citizen
