Thanks so much for the responses. To make my complaint clear: I've lost a day of vacation and made a roundtrip to the airport (with infant!) because I was assured the flight was okay.
I'm not getting the vacation day back (so far), because they do not have award seats available for any of the days following my travel. I did not book an award ticket. I paid for my ticket when I booked through a travel agency. What happened is that they sold me a ticket that they paid for with skymiles. On that subject I believe I have a complaint with the travel agency that I need to pursue.
The useless airport trips & letter hand outs are the second ones that I've received from Air France. I did 2 trips with them and this is the second time this happened, so in my case 100% of the time. Looking at facebook someone posted on the AF US site on 08/18 that no AF380 flights would fly IAD/CDG. If issues were known this far in advance then I should have been notified.
Another complaint of mine is that I wanted to fly with the A380. I paid more for flying with AF, because I thought I was going to fly this awesome plane and the extra space was worth it to me to pay up. I've learned my lesson. My future reservations will be based purely on price, because the frills are not reliable.
A couple minutes ago we have just been struck with an earthquake here and now I'm pretty sure that I won't be able to fly anyway as flights are (understandably) grounded. Next year I'm going camping.
One last thought - does the EU directive apply to US flights and citizens?
Thanks for hearing me out. It's so frustrating, you work work work all year and then finally your few measly earned vacation days come up and this happens (EVERY TIME TO ME).