A few days ago my wife and I flew AF back from BKK-CDG-IST. Now as some of you may remember, the only reasons for flying AF were that AF owed me two upgrades due to a lost baggage incident, and Af is a Skyteam partner (my wife needed the miles to lock in status for 2001). I don't even want to go into the disaster we had getting out to Vietnam on AF (In short, we didn't: Due to some kind of labour problem in France the IST-CDG flight was going to be really late into CDG, they rebooked us on SR, the seats were terrible-let's not go there. All I can say is that I am currently fighting for the miles).

Anyway, we never got any upgrades because AF customer service stinks and they decided that they would not give them for travel which did not originate in the US.

Anyhow, I digress: I am 6'7", I do not fly coach on long hauls, on the rare occasion that I do, I get an Emergency Exit seat or I simply do not fly (OK, I will take a seat with aminimum of one empty seat next to me in a pinch). I requested over and over again EE seats and was assured by the Af office in Bangkok two days before the flight that the airport had been called and I would get the seats (That's how paranoid I am about this). Besides with Skyteam, I am a "superduper elite plus plus titanium" or something like that (DL Plat).

We arrived at the airport 3 hours before the flight, just after check in opened. I went to the Espace desk, handed in my tickets as well as our DL cards with their newly applied Skyteam stickers, and was told, "These are economy tickets, you have to get in that line!". I said, "look at our cards and status at Delta". to which she said, "Yes, but they both expired on 12/00". I told her that we had not received them and that she should check on her computer.

I was told that they do not have this facility. She than agreed to check us in at that desk but gave us the wonderful seats of 18F and G (the middle of the middle). I of course refused to take them. I asked where my EE's were. She told me that they are only for elite members and that besides there had been no request made (looking over the desk I could see 2 requests in the record in English and one in Turkish). I then asked if we could have a whole row or at least an extra seat. She told me that the flight was overbooked and it was impossible. I asked for the station manager.

Five minutes later Dragon Lady appeared. She told me that I could take the seats offered or not fly. At this point, the check in idiot tried to change the subject by pointing out that we had 4 pieces of luggage which weighed 60 kilos while our limit was 46 kilos. I fought this one off as we had checked the same bags HAN-BKK four days earlier with AF.

Anyway, I asked Dragon lady to please upgrade us as the flight was overbooked by 20. She stated that they would have to take care of Frequence Plus Rouge passenegers 1st and then Bleu passengers. I later established that there were a grand total of two rouges on the flight and one bleu (the two reds were already in Business). She then told me that Delta Platinum meant nothing to her as we fly much less than AF Rouge members. I went nuts, I mean a Rouge has to fly 40K while we have to fly 100K, besides, they should take care of their own first. I just though that as a "Superduper elite" I would at least get upgraded before people with no status on any airline, I later checked the manifest and there were only something like 18 Frequence Plus members on the entire plane.

The woman then told me that she had very little idea about Skyteam as it only came into being the previous week (ie Jan 1st?), and started mumbling about whether I knew that she also had to cater to AeroMex and KL passengers as well.

This was all quite surreal as she then started to mumble about not knowing whether my card was real, and that she couldn't check my mile balance. I responded that soon shw would have to deal with Czech passengers as well. She grunted and started walking away. I then told her that I was going to call Delta in the US from my cell phone to have someone explain to her what Skyteam was and what her responsibilities were.

After 10 minutes I got through to SMS, I explained my problem and tried to get her on the phone. She got very nervous and refused. Then immediately she came up with TWO EMERGENCY EXIT SEATS. Then they refused to give us lounge passes. It took another five minutes to get them!

What a bunch of *ssholes. I really really hate AF. Look Skyteam has been around for 6 months now and they can't even teach their people what it is. They have no concept of service or customer loyalty.

Delta really has to get them in shape or dump them. This is ridiculous.