Second time, normally, I tried this at Charles de Gaulle airport. The lady there said that I need to do this in my country of residence, and gave me the contact details from Air France luggage services in Bucharest.

Third time I called Bucharest office where I was told to send them the documents by normal post, but they cannot guarantee anything, not even the fact they will receive them. I found this very strange and sent the documents by fast courier and got a registration number and their signature on receive.

After just 2 weeks I got an email telling that my receipts will be paid by AF, and in just 10 days I got the money in my account. Not much, I don’t really care about the money, the whole thing I did just as a principle and I suggest everybody do the same!

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Next week I will have a return flight to Biarritz Parme, France, and all my 4 segments have booking class N. Having this flights not counted as Level Flights will be very bad for me since I have right now 27 segments flown with SkyTeam, just 3 segments away for Gold level.

I tried to get some clarification from AF support. This is bad, it’s a pure French organization, I mean:

• don’t have a normal phone number, there is just one with ~0.5 EUR/minute
• don’t have an email address, you need to fill some web form
• there is no possibility to reply their answers, for extra clarification you need to fill again the web form

The first thing (1st try) was filling the web form with:
“Can you please check why for a flight from Paris to Bucharest I received 0 miles and not considered as a level flight?”
The answer is telling a lot about their systems:
“Upon investigation, we regret to inform you that we are unable to fully satisfy your request.
The following activities cannot be taken into account :
AF1088 13 June 2008 from Paris to Bucharest
Award activities are not eligible for Miles accrual.
Detailed information about the conditions that apply to Miles accrual is available in the “Flying Blue” section of our websites, www.airfrance.com and www.klm.com. “
Of course it was not an Award flight, but I dropped it.

I tried once more (2nd try):
“I had a return flight from Paris to Bucharest on 13th of June this year, booking class N, where I didn’t receive any miles and very strange it was not countered as a Level flight.
Now I have in 2 weeks time 4 segments with booking class N. Can you please tell me if they will be counted as Level flights or not?
I agree that for some cheaper flights it’s ok not to get any Award or Level miles, but why it is not counted as a level flight?”.
The elaborate answer came:
“You informed us of activities that you would like to have credited to your account.
Upon investigation, we regret to inform you that we are unable to fully satisfy your request.
Award activities are not eligible for Miles accrual.
Detailed information about the conditions that apply to Miles accrual is available in the “Flying Blue” section of our websites, www.airfrance.com and www.klm.com. “

I got a little angry and made another try (3rd try):
“This is the third time when I am writing you, trying to get an answer for the following question: are flights with booking class N counted as Level FLIGHTS?
The first time your answer was totally out of the subject, the second one was a template message referring to miles.
If you are pointing me again to airfrance.com website, maybe you can search before where this information about Level Flights is.
I can tell you that is nothing there.”
This time the answer is much more clear:
“Looking for information on the accumulation Miles related to your flights.
In the Flying Blue program, the number of Miles earned premium depends on the distance of your flight ticket prices, the booking class and the class of travel. In addition, some fares and booking classes do not earn Miles.
Detailed information about the conditions that apply to Miles accrual is available in the “Flying Blue” section of our websites, www.airfrance.com and www.klm.com. “”

My conclusion: there are some monkeys there choosing a template answer for each issue. There is no mention of Level Flights in their emails, just things about miles.

I am not giving up and will be back with later information!

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Air France luggage tag

I was wrong! I arrived in Montpellier but my luggage didn’t make it. After waiting around 30 minutes went to the Air France Baggage Service where it was a long queue. In almost one hour it was my turn. They said that were very sorry about the problem, it’s frequent when you have a connection on Paris Roissy Charles de Gaulle airport and my luggages are waiting in Paris for the next flight to Montpellier.

What they offered me was:

• Assurance 99% that my luggage will catch the night flight
• Delivery of my luggages to the hotel because I am Elite level on SkyTeam. For non-Elite travellers you should pick the luggages for yourself from the airport or pay a fee for delivery
• A small necessaire and a t-shirt
• Compensation for up to 100 EUR high necessity shoppings based on receipts, since I was not on my residence country.

Air France is sorry for not delivering your luggage

I didn’t intended to make any shopping since my luggage should have arrived in the same day, but thinking twice I decided to bought a pair of pants and a shirt, just in case.

My luggages finally arrived at around 11:00 PM, 10 hours after me and I was a little happy and considered this an incident.

Two days later, I boarded on my return flight, also with a connection in Paris Charles de Gaulle, but this time just 1 hour and a quarter between flights. I tried to use Air France shuttle between ChDG terminals, since I thought it is quicker. Wrong again! Walking between terminals was around 15 minutes, but waiting for the bus was 20 minutes, with 5 minutes more waiting for the bus to leave (the driver was filling some forms) and 5 minutes the ride. Double the walking time.

I arrived at my terminal very late, check the monitors and it was no flight to Bucharest on them. Went to the information desk where 2 ladies there indicated me 2 distinct boarding gates. I was happy that the first one was the lucky one since I was really running out of time, arriving at the gate 10 minutes before the scheduled departure time.
At the gate, another problem: the person from security check asked me if I have any electronics/chargers in my hand luggage. The truth is all my hand luggage is full with them, not so much else. When I opened the bag he said something like “oh mon maman” and very careful check all of them for about 5 minutes. Of course I was asked to take my shoes off.

Arrival in Bucharest. Waited for the luggage until the last person left and felt something like a deja-vu. Went to Baggage Services, stayed in line for 20-30 minutes, got the irregularities report, this time with no compensation and found out that my luggage will arrive the next day around 3 PM.

The luggage arrived the second day, but since I was not at home and they couldn’t deliver them at that location, I was forced to do a 200 km round-trip to the airport to pick them.

Now I am trying to get the compensation from my first flight. I asked the Baggage Service in Montpellier where to leave the documents and she said that in Paris airport. I went to Paris airport to ask and they said that I should contact my local Air France KLM office and gave me a phone number.

I called today and found out that I need the following documents:

• Irregularities report copy, received from Baggage Service in Montpellier
• Original Baggage tag
• Boarding Passes copies
• Original receipts for the goods that I bought
• Bank account details

The thing that is very strange is that they take no responsability for paying the compensation, no deadline, no registration number for your request, no confirmation call or email, nothing. It’s just sending the documents to a black box and waiting to see if you are lucky.

I am sending the documents by post today with a receive confirmation and will update the post when I’ll have news.

The conclusion is: try to avoid making connection in Paris Charles de Gaulle airport or travel just with hand luggage. I’ll go for the first one

Andrei