Last year I flew over 54,500km. All of it for pleasure, almost entirely on premium cabins. I’m fortunate enough that I have a life which allows me to travel this much for pleasure, and I’ve now organically racked up elite status with both SkyTeam and oneworld. It’s fair to say that at this point I’ve experienced enough airlines to have my preferences. Air France and KLM were and still are (after this incident) one of my most favourite airlines to fly on, and I will jump at any opportunity - or even take a slight detour - to fly them, and this is entirely on merit of their passenger experience and service.
Having said that, there was this one time things went so wrong that I had to sue them. I haven’t publicly spoken about it until now, mostly because I believed that I couldn’t just publicly call out AFKL for a matter that’s already been resolved. However, I’ve given this some thought and I didn’t sign a settlement agreement that prevents me from talking about this, so I’m putting this out there for other people who have been essentially badgered into giving up on their claims by an unscrupulous airline (which I’m sure quite a few of you have been) - heck, as recently as May this year, Swiss rejected a perfectly valid EU261 claim from a flyer by citing issues with the Boeing 737’s rudder PCU, which is absolutely bizarre, not least because Swiss doesn’t fly the type of aircraft at all and those issues were solved in the 1990s.
So let’s talk about the time I had to sue Air France.
The Situation
This decade began a bit weirdly, to put it mildly. Not only was COVID a global tragedy, it was an additional nightmare for people who relied on pleasure travel to maintain their mental health (i.e., me). Now I have a bit of an unique situtation wherein I live in Europe and still happen to have an Indian Passport, so I was allowed to travel as much as I wanted between home and… home. This is when I started travelling on premium cabins - Air France would let me upgrade for 200 EUR one-way to Business Class on a 300 EUR round-trip Economy ticket, and I took full advantage of that, racking up my miles with them. This is when AFKL truly got me - even in their then limited form, service on long-haul Business on both AF and KL were so good I went out of my way to fly them. Two round-trips to India, one to the US mere days after it re-opened to visitors, and a smattering of smaller trips. Then, as 2021 was about to end, travel restrictions were gradually being lifted and I wanted to go somewhere special to end the year. Another chance to fly AFKL long haul.
I had been planning to go to the Dubai Expo for years, and when it finally took place after being delayed by a year, I chose Air France to carry me there. Frankfurt to Dubai and back for 280 EUR plus whatever the check-in upgrades would cost. It was going to be epic. I booked the flights about a week before leaving, pre-applied for my visa, booked my hotel, got my Expo tickets, and was all set to have a nice week away from the German winter.
The first sign that something was amiss came when I was checking in online for the flight the evening before I was supposed to depart. I was deeply disappointed to find that I couldn’t select any Business Class seats for the long-haul segments of my ticket - all of the seats showed up as occupied. Resigned to flying in Economy after so long, I pressed ahead with the process until it was time to actually get my boarding pass. What they gave me instead was a so-called “Check-In Confirmation Document”, that said something along the lines of “you’re checked in, but you need to see a check-in agent at the airport to get your boarding pass.”
Now this isn’t something entirely unusual. In fact, if you’re flying internationally out of India, you will always hit this issue because exit controls in India insist on stamping not only your passport but also your boarding pass - and it needs to be a boarding card, not a print-at-home boarding pass. However, this is fairly unusual for an international flight departing Europe or North America. Even if the airline has to verify your travel documents prior to letting you on the plane, they usually issue a mobile boarding pass and do a document check at the gate.
Not thinking much of it, I took the train to Frankfurt Airport and arrived at Terminal 2 about 90 minutes before the connecting flight to Paris was scheduled to depart. I stood in line at the check-in desk for a few minutes, and when it was my turn I presented my documents to the agent. She started doing the usual furious typing on the computer, before pausing, looking at all of my documents carefully all over again, and then staring at the computer some more.
Then she said a sentence no traveler embarking on a much looked forward to trip wants to hear.
“I’m sorry, but the computer does not give me the button to issue a boarding pass.”
Eh?
She asked me to stand aside while she processed the rest of the line, and then once the line was empty she looked over my ticket again. There was no change - she just couldn’t issue the boarding pass.
And then, instead of calling a supervisor, she just told me to call customer service to have me rebooked, closed the check-in counter and walked away.
EU261
Once it dawned on me that I wouldn’t be getting on that flight, I was left aghast.
In Europe, if you’re denied boarding for a flight, you’re supposed to be given a document listing your rights. In this instance I wasn’t given anything.
Relying on my limited knowledge about the EU261 regulations, the first thing I tried to do was to call Air France to get myself rebooked. I was left in the queue to talk to a representative for about 30 minutes, and then the phone automatically disconnected. When I called back immediately, an automated voice recording told me that customer service had closed for the day, and I should call back the next working day.
Great.
With nothing else to do, I took the train back home. While on the train I filed my EU261 Compensation Request on Air France’s website.
In short, the EU261 rules gives me certain rights if my flight is delayed, cancelled or if I’m denied boarding. Apart from rebooking or cancelling my tickets for a full refund, it also orders the airline to pay a cash compensation to me depending on the length of the flight and the severity of the disruption. In this case, since I’d have to cancel the entire trip, I was owed a full refund on my ticket plus 600 EUR in cash compensation.
Disappointed and by now quite angry, I got home, didn’t eat and just went to sleep.
Two days later I got a reply from Air France:
Dear Mr. Gupta,
…
Having checked our records, I note that you were not allowed to board the aforementioned flight due to lack of necessary documents.
…
Despite this unfortunate experience, we hope to see you on board our flights again soon.
Best regards,
[REDACTED]
Air France KLM Customer Care Assistant
Now this sort of slimy behaviour is well expected from low-cost carriers like Ryanair and WizzAir, but Air France? I was shocked.
For what it’s worth, this was a blatant lie. I had every single document needed to enter the United Arab Emirates, and then some more. I had pre-applied for my visa and had it issued, and I had also pre-submitted my health information to the UAE authorities and had already been approved to arrive. I was not only carrying all my pre-approvals, I was also carrying my original vaccination certificates and a recent PCR test result in both digital and paper form. Also, this wasn’t at all what the check-in agent told me.
This was the turning point for me. I was, to put it mildly, absolutely furious. Air France had to pay, even if I lost money in the process. The actual compensation no longer mattered to me, the principle was the only thing driving me at that point.
The European Consumer Center Germany
Now I’m resident in Germany, and Air France is domiciled in, well, France. This was going to make thing slightly difficult if I wanted to deal with Air France directly.
I considered suing immediately, but I thought of giving something else another try. The European Union is nothing if not hellbent on protecting the rights of us little consumers from Big Business, and they run a network of consumer advice and assistance centers dedicated to cross-border disputes. They don’t have the power to litigate, but they are empowered to communicate to the company on your behalf, and advise you on the next steps depending on the outcome. Best of all, it’s completely free.
I submitted my case to the Europäisches Verbraucherzentrum Deutschland - The European Consumer Center Germany - and waited. I expected it to be months before someone got to it, but I was pleasantly surprised when I got an email reply just two days later. We’ve looked over your documents and the description of the events you’ve sent us, they said. This looks legit. We’ll speak to Air France.
From then on, it did take months, as Air France was apparently taking their sweet time to reply to the EVZ. However, the EVZ itself was great. They kept me updated via email every few weeks on the process, asked for additional details or documents as were necessary and when I did ask them something, I usually got a reply within hours. The communication was extremely professional and courteous. For an entirely taxpayer funded organisation, their level of professionalism and expertise would put many private law firms to shame.
About three months later, I finally got the email from the EVZ letting me know that Air France had finally replied.
Air France told the EVZ that I was carrying an invalid PCR Test result. They said that the PCR Test was more than 48 hours old, and therefore was inadmissible for my flight. That they had to deny me boarding was entirely my fault, and therefore I was ineligible for any compensation whatsoever.
The folks at the EVZ, bless their hearts, wrote to me that this was disappointing but fairly typical for Air France, and even if I supply evidence to the contrary they usually never change their position. I should just go ahead and sue them.
And while I had expected as much, it still angered me some more.
The European Small Claims Procedure
Air France’s claim that I was carrying an invalid PCR Test result was of course not true. It was true that my test result was more than 48 hours old. However, that was never a problem, because:
- As of the beginning of December 2021, Dubai required PCR Test results to be at least 72 hours old, not 48 hours as Air France claimed. My test result was indeed less than 72 hours old.
- This whole thing was a moot point, as people from certain countries (including Germany) who had been vaccinated at least twice (as I had been) didn’t need any sort of testing before entering Dubai. I just happened to have a PCR Test result on me.
As it so happened, going to the EVZ before suing turned out to have been a great idea. While I did spend a bunch of time and didn’t get a result, I got something very important for litigating - evidence. I would be able to supply all my communications with the EVZ as evidence during litigation, and given the little hole Air France had dug for itself, this was going to make my job so much easier.
Now I could hire a lawyer and sue them the normal way, but for a total claim amount of around a thousand euros, I’d lose money over legal fees. Even though I was okay with losing money over this, most countries have simplified procedures for small claims and Europe has an amazing system that works even for cross-border lawsuits and allows me to represent myself.
The European Small Claims Procedure is a simplified procedure for you to go to court over claims of up to 5000 EUR. It works for cross-border disputes within the EU (except for Denmark), and it looks more like a court-supervised arbitration than a court case, with a written procedure and simplified evidentiary rules. You don’t have to fill up your forms in legalese, and an oral hearing is entirely optional, with the judge deciding to call one only if it’s strictly necessary.
You also have some choice over where to file your case - you can file where the “injuring action” took place, you can file where you’re domiciled, or you can file where the defendant is domiciled. All with the same forms.
In my case, I had a choice of filing in Frankfurt (where I was denied boarding), Heidelberg (where I live) or some district court in Val-d’Oise, France (the department of France where Roissy-en-France, the location of Air France’s headquarters, is situated). In Germany I’d have to pay a court fee of around 200 EUR (which Air France would be made to pay me back if I won), whereas filing in France would be free. I decided to file in Heidelberg, mostly because I could walk to the Amtsgericht Heidelberg and because even though I speak neither French nor German all that well, I could have a lot more help with communicating with the court in German than in French.
The Case
Now I don’t remember the exact dates, but I finished with my Form A and the associated documents around July 2022, about 7 months or so after the actual incident. I sent in the big package of documents and waited. The court is supposed to serve the defendant within 15 days of receiving my Form A, but clearly that didn’t happen because I waited and waited… and waited so long that I entirely forgot that I had sued Air France.
And then one day, just before the Christmas break, I suddenly received a letter from the court with a copy of a reply from Air France’s law firm in Germany, saying they needed some more time to formulate their reply since their lawyer who handles cases for Air France was on sick leave. This was my first sign that Things Were In Motion (TM).
Sometime in late January 2023, I finally received the first actual reply from Air France’s law firm. They argued that my case was frivolous and should be thrown out. I was at fault for not supplying a valid PCR Test result (i.e., one that was less than 48 hours old), and I had been told as such by Air France both via their customer service when I had emailed them to ask for compensation under EU261, and also via the EVZ. Therefore I was clearly wasting everyone’s time, and all legal costs should be recovered from me.
They framed their reply in a way so as to make individual arguments and supply evidence for each argument. Critically, one of the core arguments they made was that a PCR Test not more than 48 hours old was necessary for the airline to permit passengers bound for Dubai to board the plane. The evidence? “Our expert witness.”
This was so insanely sloppy that I had to sit and think for a moment if this was a trick.
I replied stating that their argument was patently false. Of course I also supplied evidence, and it was slightly better than their “trust me bro” evidence. I could actually find cached versions of webpages with the entry rules in force at that time from multiple sources (Dubai Airports, the UAE ICA and Emirates) on Archive.org - with snapshots dated a week to just a few days before I was supposed to depart.
And then I waited some more. After the end of the first 15-day period, they asked for an extension of a month. After the month had passed, they asked for another month.
And then, the day before the second month-long extension was about to run out, I found, in my email inbox, a direct communication from Air France’s law firm.
“Hey, could we settle?”
I read through the rest of the email quickly. “… we’ll pay you the full amount of the financial claims that you assert against us, and reimburse you for the court costs. In return, you agree to withdraw the case… we assume no liability and admit no guilt.”
Now I was fairly furious with Air France, and the bit about them admitting no guilt didn’t really sit right with me. I knew I had an airtight case, and after they essentially just kept messing with me for more than a year hoping I’d just go away so they could keep my money, them not admitting guilt didn’t feel like justice.
I was going to refuse the settlement until a lawyer friend of mine talked me out of it, convincing me that it wasn’t worth my time or effort anymore since I’d functionally been made whole at this point.
But I’d be damned if I was going to let them go that easy. So I sent the law firm a reply said I’d accept the settlement and withdraw my case, with one additional condition.
And that, folks, is how hanging on my living room wall I have a framed letter of apology written to me by Air France’s Germany Manager of Customer Experience.
Aftermath
Since the incident and until the settlement was complete, I didn’t fly with Air France or KLM on purpose, choosing other airlines even when AFKL was the cheapest.
After we settled and I withdrew my case I decided to give them another shot, but I haven’t had the chance to get on Air France metal yet. I’ve flown KLM a couple of times though, and it’s always been the same great experience with them.
However, one thing I’ve done since the settlement is that I’ve moved my SkyTeam frequent flyer account from Delta SkyMiles to Flying Blue, and having started from scratch I’ve gained elite status in a couple of months. So you can guess how much I’m sticking with SkyTeam airlines for my flights these days.