I am sure that your experiences have been troublesome and that is definitely upsetting. Even forgetting that you are Plat for a moment, to ignore a paying customer who is encountering issues is not something that any company should be doing. But let's face it, the airline industry in general is not a paragon of customer service. You will find that for every airline out there, these kind of harrowing stories exist. Yes, there are airlines that have great ground and air experience, even surpassing AFKL, but as soon as things go wrong and IRROPs are involved, most of these airlines are a nightmare to deal with. Not only will you encounter resistance to get things fixed, you'll deal with long holds, language barriers, downright unwillingness to do anything, and possibly long phone calls to phone numbers in different continents. This is true for even likes of TK and QR, who tend to be quite popular with people. Recently with LA, where I hold a pretty high status too, they even refused to refund me money to my account (instead putting it in a wallet) even though all their conditions said they would. Had to get regulators involved to get that money back. Bottomline, at many airlines they couldn't give a hoot about your status either - except for pre-boarding, luggage and maybe a priority phone line.

Looking for a European airline to replace with? Well, BA and LH group aren't exactly doing great either - just look at the forums here. BA still flies 2-4-2 layouts in business and LH group can't even get their hard product updated 7 years after they announced it. BA's frequent meltdowns at LHR are well known, and at least in my subjective opinion LH's customer service isn't something to write home about. I know that AF shamefully still flies the NEV4 but at least there are several reports of them rebooking passengers when asked, without pushback. If one of the US big three are your choice, then too I caution you to read all the outrage many of them have caused in the last year amongst their frequent fliers.

In the end, it is your money and you are free to take it where you like, but just keep it in mind that no airline is consistently great. Each one of them will eventually fail spectacularly, no matter what your status with them is.

I realize that this is an online forum and my personal experiences of usually good customer service from AFKL, including resolving specific issues in onboard/ground services, is not going to comfort you. You are angry and you want to feel like you have a resolution, and if things are indeed AFKL's fault, you deserve a resolution. I suggest written complaints, and escalations by email if your issues are indeed very serious. I do find it interesting that you think that DL and KL are much better, but as someone who has a good split across all these three airlines, I can tell you that on average none of them are truly better. AF does some things better, KL does other things better and DL some others. But each of them has glaring problems they need to fix; but so does every other airline.

As for the rebooking issues you seem to have encountered with the Plat line, if not a hyperbole, it is indeed not a good experience. Tbh, neither myself and nor my family have ever encountered problems at that level, even with a significant amount of flying. Both the Plat line and Ulti line have always done great work in making things happen. Are they limited by rules? Of course, but I find that if you work with them and give them options on what you can do, and be pro-active in getting things resolved, I've never not had a good resolution to a bad IRROPs situation. Of course, they can't create availability on other flights for you, but when truly warranted they even rebook us to non-partner airlines. Sometimes if the alternatives they give you don't work, and you ask for a non-partner rebooking, you might have to insist and then the Plat agent might have to get a supervisor to sign off on it, but I have had zero experiences where this didn't eventually happen when I needed it. We've been rebooked to LH, BA, SK, LA, AI, UK, VS (pre-partnership) over the years.

What is really odd to me is that you had a message that a flight was cancelled, and the Plat line confirmed, but you still went to the airport to board rather than have the Plat line rebook you when you called? What happened that you didn't ask for a rebooking for a cancelled flight and that the Plat line didn't rebook you on the phone? I am not accusing you of anything, but there appears to be some missing information here since in my experience any call to the Plat line for a cancelled flight leads to them looking for alternatives. I also noticed that you are quite upset that this was your treatment in business; but honestly, just flying business doesn't mean that during IRROPs you get entitled to more options. Your status gets you more options for sure, but flying business in the end is just paying for a better seat (and ancillary services). You also say these were full fare business tickets, but it seems not, since you haven't received refunds but full fares can be canceled for a refund anytime. You perhaps just meant that they were revenue business tickets - in that case, this is truly not to be rude to you, but the vast majority of business class customers pay for their flights rather than on redemptions. Again, it won't make you extra special to them, but if you work with the Plat line to look for fixes politely and pro-actively, then unless they truly have no options available they will typically resolve an IRROP issue quite well. Btw, this fact about being a revenue business customer will be true on every other airline too; it won't give you extra options (though some airlines do have dedicated phone numbers for business customers without status).

Same thing with the waiting at the hotel. Was this the only AF/KL flight from the airport you were at? Did you call the Plat line when this happened and asked for rerouting? Once again, something seems to be missing here because in all my experiences when a flight gets delayed like this, I always call the Plat/Ulti line and they look into rebooking options, rather than wait for the ground staff to figure it out for me. This, in my experience, has consistently been the best thing about the Plat/Ulti line; the ability to be pro-active rather than wait for the ground staff to figure things out as they deal with hundreds of passengers in your situation. It's one of the reasons I don't move my business to another airline group; I know others offer similar services for status holders, but building status would take long and tbh AFKL Plat/Ulti lines have always done a great job at fixing IRROPs (within sensible limits). It's really strange to me that you had a contract with AFKL, access to the Plat line, and yet went to the hotel to wait for 9hrs and then bought a ticket yourself rather than getting them to rebook you!

None of this is a defense of AFKL. I just see that there are potential details missing, and offer you the thought that perhaps being politely proactive with the Plat line to resolve issues, and offering suggested re-routings, would get you better results. Even if you take your business to another airline, these things will likely only enhance your overall experience.

I truly hope you find an airline that meets your standards of treatment, and when you do, please come back and tell us who they are. I say this not to be cynical, but because I would love to find out which airline I could move my business to such that they will consistently exceed AFKL's ground and onboard product, while offering immaculate customer service, being comparably priced, having a similar partner network and frequent flyer program, and route network.