orbitmic

[emphasis mine]. Reading this makes me furious. Has AF not learnt anything? It is actually not the goodwill gesture (although I love your Freudian slip of "godwill"!! Might in fact describe it much better!) that shocks me (I'm fine with the airline suggesting it wasn't supposed to but is doing it to be nice although it is not particularly subtle) but the part that truly infuriates me is that notion of not solving problems at the earliest possible opportunity, and allowing a sour taste to develop with the idea that the customer can then complain about it and then it will be compensated by customer service because it is AF's internal procedure:

NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Honestly, I am starting to lose faith. This was exactly the way I was answered with my cancelled flight problem (in effect what it meant was: "we won't put you on any of the flights with plenty of empty seats so you can fly but don't worry, we first need you to miss your flight and then you can write to customer service and they will deal with you").

Now, you are being answered the same in Hong Kong while they had a freaking 13 hours to prepare everything to make sure that two repeat P passengers, with status, would have the experience of a bad incident not AF's fault (a long delay) superseded by the memory of AF acting like troopers and sorting out everything in the background (the "moments of gratitude" which our friend San Gottardo mentioned multiple times) and that at the immense cost of about €50 per passenger, for tickets that have cost thousands and they don't do it???

Reading this makes me very sad. Not because of the minor inconveniene caused but because it says something about the airline's etos still not changing and still putting AF's internal processes at the heart of the world rather than the passengers.

Again all the sadder that as mentioned before, the hard product looks really excellent.