Delay to AF165 rebooked but booking incorrect
 

Myself, wife and 2 young kids booked on AF165 leaving 17/7 (in a few hours) but flight delayed 1:20 due to technical reasons on incoming aircraft. Received email last night. Contacted Air France service desk in US (Fr and Th did not answer) as I would miss onward connection. Agent rebooked to TG this evening, 16hrs later. Bad but better than alternative of spending night and half of tomorrow in Paris. All good so far and a good result after 90 minutes on th phone.

Tried checking in online with TG but my ticket bounces, other 3 passengers ok. Unfortunately a mistake was made in rebooking, TG say there is a booking for 4 seats but only 3 passengers and 3 ticket numbers attached. They say they will refuse to honour travel for the missing passenger, myself.

Called US service centre 3 times, they insist my ticket is valid, there is a ticket number and it shows on their system. They even reissued ticket with new ticket number but problem still exists. Called Thai 3 times and they can see ticket but insist booking still has only 3 out of 4 passengers specified and ticket number and passenger details missing. They say they cannot add and issuing carrier must correct booking.

To make matters worse, I did not realise Air France US service desk is handled by DL, so ticket originally issued on AF is reissued on DL stock.

It has taken over 5 hrs and everyone seems to think it it is the other's problem. Am now at a loss on how I can travel. What can I do?

Wondering if a solution would be to just book a new ticket on my own money and claim back from AF but I am afraid they will reject the claim and I will be severely out of pocket. A last minute one way on premium economy to Europe on TG does not come cheap, so it is a big risk.

For those who haven't memorized the AF schedule this is a BKK-CDG service.

Fault is less important at this stage than practicality. One way or another, one of the e-tickets has not made it from AF to TG and until that happens, TG won't board the passenger associated with the that e-ticket.

First, call AF (DL if in the US) and ask them to resend the e-ticket. Or, better yet, do a three-way call with AF (DL) and TG. Until TG has an e-ticket number, it has nothing and you have nothing.

Next best is to go to the airport early and have AF print a paper ticket (FIM) which you can physically take to TG. With a little luck, a manager at the AF counter will know his counter-part at TG and be able to walk this over for you. But, you can do it yourself.

If you purchase your own ticket, don't expect anything from AF other than a refund of the missing ticket.


A relatively low-tech simple solution is to head to the airport early and

You don't indicate what is your connecting flight. From your profile, I assume that it is GOT but it might help to know.

I side with Often1 (although it seems he mistook TG for TK).
Whose fault is irrelevant at this stage. TG is notorious for its poor IT.

You did not make things easy by calling AF US (e.g. DL) and having a ticket reissued on DL stock.
IMO doing a three-way call will be hard to achieve. Going to the airport early seems the best option, BUT I believe that DL has no operations in BKK anymore and AF only two flights per week (Thu and Sat), so you will not get them at the airport.

Buying your own ticket could turn out very expensive for you.

it's very unlike you to mix up your airlines! TK is Turkish Airlines, TG is Thai Airways.

I hope you are OK!!

And I hope the OP got this sorted. Though AF165 was only delayed by 68 minutes and is currently expected to arrive at CDG with only a 31 minute delay, it may have been better to stick with the original ticket and sort something out at CDG (if they had not already been rebooked while in the air)

Ok. Here's an update. Seeing as we would be stuck in Bangkok an extra day, decided to head to airport anyway this morning sans family to talk with AF directly. They were proactively rebooking people with connections and was told we were in line to be rebooked so were glad that I had contacted the call centre already to rebook onward connection to GOT as I saved them a bit of work. Once they looked at my booking they saw my family were good to go but there was indeed a problem with my ticket. Progress.

After an hour of tapping away and calling supervisor, no progress on getting it sorted. They said they could not find new ticket and details. I insisted I had a new ticket number, which I had to continue insisting 5-6 times, finally they asked if I really had a new ticket number and to see the number. After it was entered into their system, things started moving again. That seemed to allow them to reissue my ticket on AF stock (rest of family on DL stock). Checked in with TG, new ticket appears fine.

Spent day in bangkok and now awaiting the evening flight.

It does look like the original connection may have worked, which would have saved all the frustration but the important thing is I have a ticket home. TGs premium economy product is with a flat bed so a big upgrade on hard product to soften the delay. Kids will also be better on the night flight. Looking for silver linings :)

Thanks for for the advice, definitely learnt a bit more dos and don'ts.

Glad to hear that all ends well.Let's now hope the TG flight is on time. TG is often selling their C seats as PE, so you are lucky.

That being said, I wonder why you went through all this stress and trouble to change a flight that was only 31 minutes late and would have left you an easy connection at CDG.

Remember that last night and even this morning AF were advising a 1:20 delay which would have resulted in a 0:40 connection from non-schengen to schengen transfer from 2E to 2G. Had I been travelling alone with work, I would have insisted on flying to Paris, but this trip is with 2 young kids <4 and a gate check stroller.

AF stated this morning they were going to rebook us anyway if I had waited until check in. That would have been AF1452 the next day, with TG we arrive 5,5hrs earlier than this.

A missed connection would have meant dealing with the mess at CDG for rebooking, waiting in lines, taxis to unknown hotels. All with kids after a long haul flight. While this rebooking was certainly frustrating, the kids were free to do as they pleased during all of this.

While there was a big upside to gambling and winning, there was also a pretty big downside to gambling and losing. I would have won if I gambled, but this felt like the safer option at the time.

OP's experience points to a larger problem when calling the US for travel to or from a station without DL service. While DL provides 24/7 phone coverage, the reissue onto DL stock is likely what caused the hiccup in this situation. Three tickets made it and one did not. But, AF was unable to locate the e-ticket without OP's assistance.

I suppose that at the start, saying "I have DL e-ticker # XXX" might speed things, but that makes things dependent on the competence of the agent.

It is troubling the AF, a worldwide carrier with aircraft and passengers at all times of day & night cannot provide some form of simplified access to a call center. All that is required is a local number in BKK which transfers to an open call center somewhere. VOIP technology makes this easy and cheap and most carriers now manage this.