Cupart

Congratulations tango302 ^

Evan!

tango302, Glad you got your bags and thanks for the detailed posts.

40C = 104F Can it really get up that high with just a lack of A/C when its Oct weather outside? If so, I would think that more people would have passed out at least. I really don't mind the lawyer exaggerating because it will grab headlines and keep the story in the news a little longer.

This is not a wild scenario that no one could have predicted. AF as well as the rest of the passenger airlines of the world need contingency plans. Perhaps tango can answer whether there were water fountains in the terminal areas. He mentioned no offerings of bottled water and little food. Just wondering if airports are so myopic that they don't provide adequate water fountains in "secure" areas.

And the comments by the lawyer in the article probably gave legs to this story. GOOD!

Again.. unforeseen? Emergency landings are a foreseeable event. Since plane fly at night it is also foreseeable that an emergency landing/diversion could occur during less-than-peak staffing levels of an airport. Even if there weren't any food vendors available at that time, water should have been the number one priority for those stranded in the terminals.

All of this is not only foreseeable but downright predictable. Too many airlines work well only when everything goes right.

Also, I wouldn't pull out my personal cc to pay for others' food and drinks unless there were a bona fide written policy instructing me to do so. I would not want to fight a corp red-tape nightmare trying to get reimbursed just to end up being told, at best, "Okay, but we don't cover the interest charges you incurred during the x-months it took to get paid!"

San Gottardo

Fully agree. But it's precisely that corporate attitude ("who are you to believe that you must buy food for your stranded pax?") rathern than FAs' individual attitudes that is the problem here.

Tenere

I had two unplanned landings or emergency stops so far in my life and these cases always turned out to be a bit chaotic esp. on airports where the airline hasn't any partner or own local crew (here Bukarest)

Once our LH flight to PVG couldn't land in Pudong due to a Taifun and after a trial to land anyway in PVg (Captain decided not to take the risk) we headed to Beijing instead. We were brought with a bus to a 5* hotel, got out rooms and were invited for a dinner buffet. The flight was continued the next morning 7:30 but we decided to stay in Beijing as this was anyway out final destination for the next week but there was no offiicial from LH to be informed. The hotel woke us several times early next morning till they understood that we won't join.

The other time I had start interrupt on CAN-BKK with TG (ThaiAirways) which caused a broken aircraft and we need to stay in hotel overnight. After disembarking information flew slow but after hours we were told to stay in hotel that night w/o any new departure time. Me and some ohters went (with the crew!!) to the nearby Novotel (now Pullman), others were driven by bus to downtown hotel (?). The next day 10:30 we continued our trip to BKK. Chaos was because the limited amount of local staff and because they went home after 17:00

even more: I hope that AirFrance will loose even more customers and soon disappear from the market

nomad1974

Yes, I am sure this would be great for competition and hence for the cosnumer

bodory

Even if AF would disappear, it will be saved in a way or another by the French government and/or a partner.

Look at what happened to Alitalia, Swissair etc...

Tenere

Swiss is in German hands now and Alitalia is somehow in the boat with AF-KLM... bad luck Italy

Of course: the fewer the big players are the lower the competition the higher the prices

nicolas75

If a leading company disappears, some other may die even before

And not necessarily the worst of them in terms of quality of service: Singapour Airlines, Thai Airways, Jal, Cathay Pacific, Austrian Airlines, CSA, Kingfisher Airlines are currently facing some heavy financial difficulties

nicolas75

do you swim with your suit-case !?

SYDguy

Why would a French citizen documented well enough to enter Singapore have any issue to enter another UE country? French consular assistance would have no role or remit in the event.

AF's various needs that night would have been variously available from the panopoly of airport service providers.

These things happen all the time, and usually it's never pretty.

JOUY31

Unless I am mistaken, what is important for the lack of border controls in Europe is being part of the Schengen zone, not the EU. Romania is not yet within the Schengen zone.

AshleyB

CX and SQ are doing rather well, considering. Mind you the economic crisis has not hit Asia nearly so hard as it has the US and Europe. But yes, ultimately, AF would always be saved by the state, even in contravention of EU law. Certainly the Italians and Greeks have not seemed overly constrained by those same laws. I would bet that AF will emerge well from the crisis. It has a new model of stripped down super high density aircraft. P will disappear (thank goodness) and there will be fewer J seats as AF's premium business shrinks. It is increasingly uncompetitive.

nomad1974

True, but this is not what SYDguy was saying. Read his post. What he is saying is that the French pax on board presumably all had their passports with them, as they were headed to SIN. So, they had all the necessary documents to enter Romania - a non-Schengen country but still an EU member state.

AshleyB

In the case of AF256 the fact that Romania is not yet part of Schengen would have been irrelevant as regards those passengers who were either EU nationals or nationals of countries not requiring a visa for entry into Romania. That group includes Singaporean, Malaysian, Australian, and New Zealand citizens. Most of the passengers would have fallen into these two groups. The problem would only arise in relation to citizens of other countries not in possession of a Romanian transit visa (obviously everybody other than the two groups mentioned above), for instance an Indian citizen resident in Singapore travelling from the US via CDG with a Schengen transit visa. This would require a decision by the chief immigration officer at Bucharest airport to admit passengers in the third group on a very temporary basis. It is common - if infrequent - practice by immigration officers in precisely this sort of case to do so.

It requires though action on the part of AF to contact the authorities and inform them of the situation and request all assistance. At this point there might be some use in the Embassy of France (NOT consular service) to also request assistance on behalf of a French company. In the present case AF was hedging its bets waiting to see if the crew would be out of hours or not before they started incurring large UNRECOVERABLE costs in Bucharest. The obvious procedure would have been to engage ground services (including emergency immigration - it can be done, and certainly possession of a Schengen transit visa would weigh heavily in favour of the third group of passengers) while AF256 was still on its way to Bucharest. But that is time consuming and costly and therefore not in the AF operating manual any longer.

JOUY31

You're right. Though it was misguided, my point was that they still needed to go through Romanian immigration to enter the country, even though they had the necessary documents. My apologies for misunderstanding SYDguy's comment.