Originally Posted by
stimpy
Is this a French bashing thread? What does this have to do with the OP? And by the way I think that the UK is far, far, far behind the French culture when it comes to civil order and especially mutual respect. Efficiency is debatable as I think both countries suffer there. Anyhow these are just the worthless opinions of internauts.
Apologies, I certainly didn't mean to offend anyone, not even my (French) self. For the (irrelevant) record, France is my country and I love it to bits. I just think that behaviours are different in different places and completely agree with
NickB it mostly means different messages (worded or unworded) assume different meanings or connotations across cultures. This being said, if you look up at the start of the discussion this refers to, we started from a point that seemed to me to be relevant to the specific thread, ie that rightly or wrongly I expected the introduction of charging for such things as luggage and seat selection would inevitably lead to some onboard tension. In both cases, I'm perfectly happy to do that on a non-national basis as the argument still holds (notwithstanding the fact that I do think that for cultural reasons, there are countries where "it is forbidden to do this" would hold more weight than in others). In both cases I base my argument on existing threads within the AF forum. (1) Re-seat selection, I'm referring to existing threads on paid seating with people complaining about paying extra for a seat and seeing people effectively moving to the one across the aisle which is free. I was simply suggesting this is likely to increasingly happen if some people 'didn't choose' their seats (2) Re-luggage, I'm refering to numerous threads on this forum about people finding it hard to find space for their luggage in the racks especially on domestic and bases-province flights which do not have priority boarding. There again, I simply meant I would expect the problem to increase further as some people won't have an inclusive piece of hold luggage and that therefore AF will need to police this. I hope that my worthless opinion is at least a bit more understandable with those explainations
Anyway, once again, my sincere apologies if anyone felt offended, those on this forum who know me personally know that it is not my style to enter any form of remotely xenophobic comment and I can assure you no such meaning was intended.