Originally Posted by
San Gottardo
AF employees on a little power trip and all too happy not to find a pragmatic way to enforce a rule.
With due respect, you are being a little unfair on AF here. Yes, you could imagine that, on occasion, some agents will find a way round a problem. Here, though, my guess is that 95% of agents across all airlines would have reacted in a very similar manner with a passenger turning up at check-in with excess hand baggage. It is, imo, wholly unrealistic to expect agents to say: "don't worry and take everything with you. This will be sorted at the gate."
The "agent refusing to give his name" is a bit of a cultural thing. In some countries (Scandinavia, Germany, Switzerland are some where I know it for a fact) people in "official" and "semi official" roles carry a badge with their name or a number or at least are obliged to give it when asked, so that they can be held personally responsible for what they do and how they enforce the law or certain rules. In France this is different, people believe that wearing a uniform (and be it just that of a private security firm) gives them certain powers and they are not responsible for their acts individually. It's the notion of "the state" or a firm acting on behalf of the state that interacts with the passenger/citizen, and that therefore the individual agent is not to be identified.
IMO, this is a huge exaggeration here. the refusal to give names in airport and airline context is very, very far from being something which is specifically French or related to French conceptions of the state. I will have to look again next time I am around but I do not recall airline agents in Scandinavia routinely wearing badges with their names despite the much greater value given to transparency and openness in those countries.
In the UK, where there is a very different relationship to state entities (indeed, there is often not even a concept of "the state" internally so that you have to sue individuals rather than the abstraction of "the state" even if your target is the functioning of state entities), it is also the case that airline and airport employees are not expected to give their names (although they would be expected to give you some unique identifier such as an employee number, for instance). If anything, I would have thought that the default position in most airports and airlines around the world is that names are not given, at least for front line employees (individuals higher up the hierarchy are a different matter) and that airports and airlines where employees where individuals are expected to provide their identity on request by a member of the public are an exception.
They also tried to pull that "no pictures allowed" on me, I asked them to show me the rule or sign that stipulated that, and they showed me a page from some rulebook - and panicked when I confronted them with the fact that the rule book was for security agents, not passengers. Again, they "threatened" with calling the police but then didn't when I simply said that I'd welcome the idea that they had just try to apply a rule to me which obviously applied to agents rather than passengers.
Was this in CDG? IIRC, there is a an arrêté préfectoral that prohibits the taking of photography within or towards restricted zones without a specific authorisation. So perhaps they were right even though they were unable (which is not that surprising, to be honest) to pinpoint exactly the specific piece of legislation.
With regards to persons, there are also restrictions linked to privacy and the "droit à l'image" but is, afaik, primarily directed towards publishing the photos rather than taking them as such.
Are you serious? The flight departed at 16h25. I think arriving more than one hour before departure with a valid boarding pass is more than plenty. I know that some people love going to lounges and doing duty free shopping at the airport before departure. But others consider time at the airport waiting for a plane to be a waste of time. If I had arrived at 15h15 for a 16h25 departure I would have asked myself whether I was going to watch the paint dry on the walls during all that time.
As an experienced frequent flyer, you may well want to leave it much later than officially recommended times. But if you do so, you better make sure that you have all your ducks in a row. Playing fast and loose with hand baggage restrictions and turning up late so that you can no longer check-in baggage if needed is playing with fire. And if you play with fire, you cannot really complain if you get burnt, even if you have played a 1000 times before and never had a problem.
Not mentionning the fact that no FQTV who knows "how to pack without incurring unnecessary stress" would show up in an airport with a TWENTY kilograms carry-on...."
As a matter of fact, many frequent travelers do exactly that. Because they are flying frequently and do not wand to wait at the luggage belt as frequently.
I have to agree with that. I often have anything between 10 and 20kg of hand luggage as I barely ever put anything in the hold to avoid delays waiting at the carousel and also to avoid lost baggage issues.