Sorry for the super long post, but a lot went on with this one:

My Delta Headaches:

331 days prior to desired flight: Reserved outbound leg ATL – CDG in Business. No Delta-coded skysavers available, no big deal, booked on AF, as availability was available via the partner travel. I reserved seats 4A & 4B on the AF 747 flight, as I wanted the smaller cabin away from the coach area.

Added a stop-over in CDG and another city, then 331 days before our desired return, booked the return, CDG – IAD – ATL, AF Business CDG – IAD, DL First IAD – ATL. Once again, I reserved seats 4A & 4B, this time on an AF 777, onces again due to the smaller quieter cabin.

In the time between booking and departure, there were about 3 schedule changes to our itinerary, and each time I called Delta to clean up our itinerary. No one mentioned anything in regard to the troubles I was about to have. Each time I called, I confirmed that we were still assigned seats 4A & 4B on each of our trans-atlantic AF Business flights.

Check-in: Arrived about 3 hours before our flight at the Air France counter, operated by Delta. After telling the agent our names, and handing over our passports, she said that we did not have a reservation. Excuse Me? I have had this reservation for 331 days, and have reconfirmed it at least once a quarter!! What is going on? Well, unless you can produce a reservation number, you don’t have a reservation that I can find. Of course I had the printout of the reservation with me. Amazingly they found it. They try to explain to me that it was screwed up when the reservation was made, and that it shouldn’t have been reserved with the AF flight #, but the Delta code-share #, and that’s why they couldn’t find it. Basically, Delta screwed the reservation up, but had no intentions of making it right. At this point, the agent tells us that we don’t have seats, and we have to go to the gate to get our seat assignements. I told the agent that I have had 4A and 4B for 331 days. No, she said, 4B is now occupied and has checked in. (FAM???) If it is a FAM, why are you kicking out a couple with one traveler being a PM and not reseating them together???? The agent is not very pleasant and is literally kicking our bags onto the baggage belt. We head to the gate with our seat request cards.

Gate: Considering this was our wedding anniversary, I didn’t want any headaches, and wanted to be able to enjoy the Business Elite lounge before departing out of ATL, but we never had an opportunity to even hit the B/E lounge. We got to the gate, and there was already a line, so I parked my fuming a$$ in line and waited until the gate agents sauntered up and took their time setting up the counter. About 50 minutes before departure, they were finally ready to help the line that was now stretching down the E-terminal. I finally got up to the counter, and explained my situation. I have had seats 4A and 4B since the flight was loaded into the system. She told me that was merely a “seat request” and that we were now in 7L and 8L. No – I told her, I have 4A and B, please give me the seats I originally reserved. She then told me that it is policy to not move someone after they have checked in. Not true, I told her, as I was moved in London. Oh, well, it’s an Air France policy. (once again FAM??) Getting more upset about thinking about spending my anniversary flight with my spouse sitting behind one another, she told me that we could have 4A(amazing that 4A is available!) and 1L and ask someone to move, or take 7L and 8L and ask someone to move. I then told her that she and I both knew that no one will trade an aisle for a window on an international flight, and to stop being dense. I then told her that she was ruining my anniversary by not fixing something that Delta screwed up. She then told me that I was ruining my own anniversary and to go away, come back 10 minutes before departure, as they may have a no-show and be able to seat us together. No dice at 10 minutes – J is full except for 1L, 4A, 7L, & 8L. Take our choice. Great – thanks for fixing your mistake, Delta. Overall, the gate agents were unsympathetic, unhelpful, and just didn’t give a rat’s behind about us.

Once we board, I am visibly upset, and we take our seats. When 8K sits down, the AF FA explains our situation and he reluctantly moves after rolling his eyes at us. At least that part worked out. I think that if we had asked versus the FA, we would have been out of luck.

The AF flight was amazingly enjoyable after FINALLY getting to sit down and relax. The service and food was amazing.

Aha – the return, it’s not over yet:
Amazingly, all of our flights intra-Europe worked out on AF (the stop-over on the original and a flight to/from Naples from CDG) even though they weren’t Delta-coded.

We checked in for our return to ATL via IAD, and, imagine this, was found in the system with no problem, and given the seats I had reserved at the 331-day mark – 4A & B. Whew – we were very glad we weren’t having the same problems as the outbound.

Once again, the flight was very very enjoyable – great service and food.

We get to IAD, clear customs, get our baggage with the bright yellow PRIORITY tags on them (which AF is very good about paying attention to by the way) and recheck them to ATL. We have a 2.5 hour layover, so we’re feeling pretty confident about our bags.

Finally, after sitting on the tarmac at IAD for 3 hours while weather cleared in ATL, we were back waiting for our bags. Not one bag out of 4 showed up. Filed a claim and waited. We had nothing.
The next day, I was told that I needed to be at a client site first thing the next morning. I called baggage services and told them the situation. 3 bags had arrived in ATL and would be delivered by 2pm. 2pm passed, I called again, wondering what I was going to pack in for my business trip. OK, the 3 bags will be there by 9pm. At 10:30pm, the baggage courier arrives with only 2 bags. The 3rd bag would be there tomorrow. He tries to get me to sign for all 3 bags, and I tell him NO WAY. Not seeing my beloved carry-on in the delivered bags, I said it needs to be here tonight, as I have a 7am flight the next day. OK, he said, it would be at my house by 12:30am. I wait up – having to wake up at 4am – no bag delivered. The next day, I flew out with a tattered bag that I managed to find in the attic. I called baggage services asking where my bag was. They told me it would be there by 2pm – I told the lady that no one would be home at 2pm. She told me to leave a note on the front door – I told her it would be pretty impossible considering I was 800 miles away. I needed to have the bag delivered to my spouse’s work address. No problem, she says, it will be there by 2pm. Long story short, the 3rd bag didn’t arrive until 11:45pm, and it still wasn’t my carryon with my PM tag on it. And the 4th bag(that had all of my PM credentials on it) didn’t arrive until the next day at 5pm (~72 hours later)!

I haven’t yet decided on what to ask Delta for compensation, but I will be sending a letter via certified mail to them – complete with the original reservation email, each subsequent email when I cleaned up the itinerary with each schedule change, and all 4 bag tags with the Priority tags attached, asking how they were lost for 2 – 3 days.

To sum up, check your reservations with AF, make sure they are Delta-coded. Actually, I don’t think that was the case, as everything else in my itinerary worked just fine. I think they FAM’d me, and then realized they screwed up, and didn’t care to fix it.