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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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