Goldorak

I wanted to report here a very recent excellent experience in Y (....no I'm not drunk ) thanks to a great crew. A forecasted banal flight which turned into something really nice.

This was a CDG-BOS flight. It was supposed to be operated by a 744 and I had booked a seat on the UD at row 65. You all know it's one of the best Y flying exp . And, maybe more important, it was one of my 2 last flights scheduled in a 747 on AF before final retirement, so I was really expecting it. But 3 weeks before flight, checking my booking on AF site, I discovered that the 744 was substituted by a 772 and so I was now obliged to fly in the 10-abreast sardine can . Thanks to my status and Le Club Elite line, I was able to select one of the best seat in the Y cabin of the B772: 20C which is at the 2nd row of Y (so ensuring rapid disembarking to speed-up a bit the nightmare that has become the US immigration in most US airports I visited for the last 2 years) and this seat has no seat in front, ensuring huge legroom. This seat is part of the seats sold with a fee. It is not a seat plus but what they call "seat at the front of the cabin". But, thanks to my platinum status, I had it for free.

After a very good late lunch at the L lounge, the flight left CDG perfectly on-time. The Y cabin was about 90% full, J seemed to be quite busy as well, but W was almost empty with only 4 seats occupied. In fact I think the explanation for this is that the flight was supposedly a 744 until 3 weeks before and the 744 has no W, so we had only 4 short-notice bookings in W.
The aperitif service started and I tried to pull the tray table from the armrest. But it was completely blocked and it was impossible to extract it from the armrest. The steward who was serving the aperitif tried also unsuccessfully. My neighbour kindly proposed me to share his table for the aperitif and the steward told me he will move me to W for the meal service .

That's what he did 1/2h after for the meal service. He accompanied me to W and told me he's serving me the W tray (as he had one spare and all "real" W pax had been already served). Even if it is a detail (as there are few differences between the W and the Y trays), I found it was a nice attention. I asked him if I could drink one of the pre-placed Evian bottle at each W seat and he said "please do, of course". He also gave me the W candy cone during the coffee service. As soon as I had finished my meal (and before they collected trash), I returned to my original seat in Y and thanked the steward when he came back for final item collection. About 45 min later, the chief purser came to speak to me to apologize for the inconvenience. I replied that this was very minor and that it has been very well handled by the crew. She had her ipad with all information about pax, so she knew about my travel pattern on AF. She thanked me for my loyalty and, because of this and the inconvenience encountered, she offered me to spend the rest of the flight in W (we were at a bit less than mid-flight). She accompanied me and told me I could choose any seat I want. She came again toward the end of the flight to thank me again and to say good bye. Even if I'm not a big fan of the W seat, it was perfect for a day leisure flight and I found all those attentions superb. They turned a very minor problem during an expected banal flight in Y into a very nice and memorable experience. So this is the kind of experience which makes you like an airline and makes you feel as a valued customer
Thank you again to those 2 crew members for having done such a great job ^.

brunos

I understand your constant enthusiasm for AF highlighted by your recent experience.
My reading of the post is that they substituted equipment without notifying you and you lost your excellent seat on the 747. Then you had a broken seat. Not a good point for AF.
The good part is that they upgraded your to Y+ coz the broken seat (the lack of tray table is really annoying for the whole flight). Your Plat status might have helped but this not uncommon for any status on any airline with a broken seat. What surprises me a bit is that they made such an important Plat member go back and forth between Y and Y+

olivedel

Turning what could have been a bad experience into a pleasant one is something that is always appreciated.
Plane substitution happens very frequently in all airlines of the world, same thing for a broken seat or a malfunctionning seat feature.

Long Haul Crews have always been good at AF, but since the "Signatures de Services" program, they even go further, especially for loyal FB members.

stimpy

Yes this is nice to see and I agree the long haul service has been excellent in the last few years.

NickB

I must say that I would tend to share brunos's perspective on this. It feels a bit like:"This guy ran me over but took me to the hospital in his top of the range BMW. Is that not absolutely wonderful?"

The response to the tray problem strikes me as not that exceptional, especially for a top elite flyer.

I would also question the "very good late lunch at the L lounge", which sounds to me like an oxymoron. A very good late lunch at the P lounge, or at a LH FCL/FCT or at the QF F lounge in SYD I could understand. But a very good late lunch lounge at the L lounge (or at the BA LHR Flounge, or at a LH SEN lounge in FRA, etc...)???

Don't get me wrong: I can certainly see why this gives you a good feeling. However, it really is basically normal incident recovery given the circumstances and if we regard this as special, this says a lot of how low our expectations are.

orbitmic

I can see both the reasons for your, olivedel's and stimpy's satisfaction at the resolution, and brunos's and NickB's note that whilst this was satisfactorily resolved in your case it is also because we are talking of a series of problems that did not bode well in the first place.

My comment would be of yet a slightly different order. It confirms to me that AF "human factor" is simply inconsistent and that you can get both great people who go out of their way to help and ensure problems are resolved to the passenger's benefit and uninspiring, ineffective ones who would have just told you to get on with it and that they could not do anything. I am very glad you got one of the former kind in this case and fully understand how one feels grateful in such cases (it has happened to me with AF). I am also acutely aware that you could have been handled by some of the latter kind or treated differently because of a different status and that this could have led to a far more negative consequence of the underlying problems. To me though, the main headline is still about the Russian roulette of the AF human factor as the resolution you got was clearly based on individual initiative and not on a standard company policy.

San Gottardo

There is a (not widely used) concept of "gratitude marketing". Basically it works this way: a customer has an issue or bad experience. An employee of the company picks it up and says all the things that make the customer think that he is being taken seriously and that the company and especially that employee really cares about him and will do everything to fix the problem. The solution is then delivered, and the customer is really happy, even if the actual solution is nothing special.

I am not convinced that concept works, but the story of the OP being enthusiastic because of a pleasently delivered but in itself underwhelming solution seems to be a nice case study (and no, I am not suggesting that AF on purpose made the problem bigger than it was).

But I agree on AF crews generally being forthcoming, polite, caring, extremely pleasant in their interaction and communication staly, and just the nicest I can think of.

saraoutou

Don't you forgot to take the "knee defender" you put for the 20C table ?

Was a lucky experience, I 've got worst with the same location ie go to the end of the plane near the odouring toilets ! (W was quite empty)
Sure it was before "osez"

delanotre

"Within the extreme competitive market in which AF/KL operates, there is a big difference between "simply satisfied " and "fully satisfied customers”.
Only the last category will become loyal customers. So every interaction needs to surpass our customers’ expectations."

brunos

Then I guess that Goldorak had low expectations in terms of lounge and 777 sardine-seats.

Goldorak

Sorry guys to have not responded before to your comments, but quite some time was needed for this and I was very busy those last days, traveling extensively

As Olivedel said, nothing extraordinary with an equipment change. Maybe some airlines advise customers about it, but on all the airlines I have traveled on and on which I had another plane type, I have never been informed of it. So there is nothing wrong with this IMO (outside the personal disappointment about the no-744), and knowing that AF automatically reassigned a seat plus in the 772.

Uncommon for any status on any airline ? Well, I 'm not so sure. If there are seats unoccupied in your class of service, I'm pretty sure most airlines (to not say all) will re-seat you in your class of service, and will upgrade you only if they have no other choice. In my case, there were a few left middle seats in Y, including in my row, so they could have re-seated me there, even if it wouldn't have been nice to me. But I paid for Y, so nothing wrong in principle to stay in Y.

They didn't make me go back and forth. As soon as I finished to drink my coffee, and before the steward came back for trash collection, I decided to move back to my Y seat. I was watching a movie, but thanks to the AVOD, I could watch it at the same moment in another seat, and I certainly didn't want them to think that I had intentions to stay in W, while I was booked in Y and not "officially" upgraded.
And so, I moved again to W when the chief purser nicely allowed me to do so.

I'm not saying this was exceptional, but this was a nice touch, as they were certainly not obliged to do so, as a few Y seats were available.

Again, don't misunderstand me. I didn't say I had a 3-stars Michelin lunch at the L lounge, and not even a one-star one and this is nothing comparable to a P lounge. But I suppose (I hope) you have good to very good meals at home, even if this is not prepared by a top chef ? And so this was the case at the L lounge. Not necessarily sophisticated products but very good, as what you eat likely for good home meal on a daily basis. And please give me more lounge in the world providing this (don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that AF is the only airline to provide good food in their hub lounges, but there are much more which provides close-to-nothing or disgusting sandwiches or other inedible food). You can see a picture of this meal here. I had :
- gazpacho
- marinated prawns
- involtinis
- cold roast beef
-potato salad
- cheese
- and a delicious apple tart for dessert :-)



I still considering it as special, because with some free seats available in my booked class of service + the nice words and discussion with the crew. I don't think my expectations are low, but feel free to think it. I'm often thinking about Zembla's signature on FT : "I never expect or ask for upgrades, but I certainly enjoy them". I completely share this view and statement.

Of course there are human factors involved and " Russian roulette", but don't you think it's not the case for all airlines in the Western world ? Asian airlines tend to be more predictable (in the good way usually) but more robotic also.

(Damned !!! How did you guess )

Low expectations for the lounge : certainly not for the CDG ones that I know by heart, knowing how frequently I visit them. See above for the discussions about the food offering. AF has greatly improved the food offering in the CDG lounges (with the noticeable exception of the horrible 2G one of course).
Low expectations for the 777 Y sardine can : certainly !

orbitmic

Sure, the "human factor" always plays a role, but rightly or wrongly, my experience is that this is far more the case on AF than on most other airlines that I fly.

Another way of saying that is that in my view, AF procedures tend to often be very poor-customer unfriendly (if I indulged in 2p historical sociology I'd say that this might be inherited from the time when AF was part of the public service rather than a private company) and some agents stick to that, but conversely, some people really go out of their way to compensate what they see as the absurdity of the system and right wrongs.

By contrast, the BA, LH, DL or AA of this world tend to have more in-built subtlety in the system. There is the standard rule but there are fairly comprehensive descriptions of acceptable deviation in some cases (I have seen them for one airline) which means that more agents will automatically use those if you tick the right box in terms of status and/or class of travel and/or type of problem although again, if what you need happens to be one of the few cases (much fewer than on AF) which has not been pre-thought by those who have organised the procedures, then you might be flatly refused or stuck in a long wait for various supervisors approval.

What does it mean in practice? Most of the most ridiculous/complete nonsense "resolution" I have been proposed have been on AF (I have mentioned several already from being sit apart on engagement trips following a "seat change" to being refused to be put on an earlier flight when it was clear mine would not fly making me miss connections, to being refused to be put on an earlier connection or on an alternative routing and "sent to Paris" on my original flight when my flight was scheduled with a multi-hour delay that would make me arrive at least 2 hours after the last onward connection while the earlier flight would enable me to make it, etc). At the same time, some of the most "staff going out of their way to help" incident resolution that I have experienced have also been on AF.

I think that as you rightly point out, despite the original incidents, your resolution certainly was very well handled. As you rightly point out, many airlines would just have politely invited you to choose any other free seat in the cabin or offered x miles compensation and I genuinely think that allowing you to spend the second half of the flight in W was an intelligent decision. I just think that it was individual "inspiration" and I have been confronted to many cases where in the absence of that sort of (minority) initiative, this would have been handled very poorly instead.

So in my sense, the Russian roulette is far more on AF - or at least the magnitude between best and worst outcomes is much broader - than on most other airlines, and if you are risk adverse like myself, this can really be an issue even though I would reemphasise that "best service" really is a possible outcome on AF and that I have experienced it multiple times.

NickB

I certainly wholeheartedly espouse the sentiment expressed in Zembla's signature too. However, I would not extend it to apply to the basics, like a functioning seat and tray.
Maybe I am outrageously demanding but I would expect a functioning seat and tray and I would not expect to be required to traipse up and down the airplane for my meal nor to be deprived of the use of a tray outside mealtimes.

In my mind, when it is not possible to supply what is normally expected and the only alternative is to either over-supply or under-supply, the former is the appropriate norm to follow. For instance, if C is overbooked and a booked C seat cannot be provided and all that is available are Y or P seats, the proper approach should be to give a P seat rather than a Y seat.

Since they were not able to provide you what you had paid for (viz. a functioning Y seat and tray), it seems to me absolutely normal to provide what they had available, viz. a functioning PE seat and tray. IMO, this would be true for passenger lambda and, a fortiori, for an elite passenger.

Goldorak

I fully agree with what you wrote here, so I think maybe you misunderstood my original post : they could have provided me what I paid for because there were still a few Y seats available (Y was filled at ca 90%) so they could have just moved me to another Y seat. But they moved me to W instead.

orbitmic

To be fair, he says that there were a few empty middle seats left in Y - so technically, they could have provided just what he paid for (ie functioning Y seat and tray).

If there are seats unoccupied in your class of service, I'm pretty sure most airlines (to not say all) will re-seat you in your class of service, and will upgrade you only if they have no other choice. In my case, there were a few left middle seats in Y, including in my row, so they could have re-seated me there, even if it wouldn't have been nice to me.

As such, I can imagine some airlines indeed simply apologetically telling the passenger that he can move to any free seat in the cabin but there are unfortunately only middle seats free.

Nonetheless, I think your first and main point remains wholly valid and I agree with you that the proposed solution of the upgrade in this specific case was also the nearest "non worse" equivalent. As such, I believe that while nice, it is not as unusual/exceptional as what our friend Goldorak fears (ie certainly not "not to say all"!). Crews are accutely aware of good and bad seats in the cabin, and they would know that 20C would be a "prime location" within the sardine can. I have similarly seen cases on other airlines when a person deprived of their booked emergency exit seat were reseated in the higher cabin despite other seats being available in Y.

In short, while I understand why Goldorak felt treated well, I agree with NickB that this is a sensible arbitration in that any other Y seat would have been an implicit downgrade which would have meant that even though the airline was doing something "technically" correct, the passenger would have likely complained and been effectively entitled to some gesture of good will. By choosing to give him the better seat in the higher cabin, I have no doubt that almost any passenger would have considered themselves treated well and thus accepted this as "full and final" compensation for their inconvenience.