It's worth not having the hassle :)
I flew the 24th in/out CDG without any effect of the strike the day before, yet tomorrow 2/3 flights on my route are canceled, leaving an A319 for that sole flight.

Knowing that a rebooking is never a walk in the park, I arrived at FCO today with plenty of time. Upon checking in at the Magnifica counters, the agent couldn’t find my booking and I had to walk to AF ticketing to get it sorted out. No big deal, but it took some 10/15 minutes for the AF lady to do whatever she had to do. Then I went back to AZ to finally get my boarding pass. The AZ staff found funny that “this time it is not Alitalia who is in strike”.

Overall I am satisfied with how the whole strike rebooking thing went, but I don’t plan to fly AF in the coming months (actually, my next intercontinental flight is, go figure, on AZ). A big part of spending a lot of money on (premium) travel is not having to bother about it – buy the ticket, go to the airport, board the flight. I wouldn’t know whether or not to give thousands of dollars to Air France over the next months, given what is going on.

Ciao from Casa Alitalia at FCO. Their Aperol Spritz is pretty good - not missing any Salon Air France thus far :)

For those traveling to France, be aware that the SNCF has warned of strikes too. I just got this email....(google translate if you need to)

Vous faites partie de nos clients les plus fidèles et nous souhaitons vous informer des conditions de voyage que vous pourriez rencontrer dans les prochains jours.

Une période de grève est annoncée à compter du 2 avril 2018 à 19h, sur la base de 2 jours de grève tous les 5 jours.

Si la date de votre prochain voyage a lieu un jour de grève, nous vous invitons à privilégier l’annulation ou le report de votre voyage. À cet effet il vous est possible d’échanger ou de faire une demande de remboursement de vos billets TGV ou Intercités sans frais ni surcoût pour les voyages prévus jusqu'au 29 avril 2018, y compris pour des tarifs non échangeables / non remboursables. Ces échanges et demandes de remboursement peuvent être effectués sur vos canaux d’achat habituels.

Les équipes SNCF sont actuellement mobilisées pour limiter au maximum les désagréments que vous pourriez rencontrer durant cette période : chaque jour, à 17h au plus tard, vous trouverez sur l’application sncf et sur sncf.com la liste de tous les trains dont le départ est confirmé pour la journée du lendemain.

Hi all . Been a lurker here for a while and appreciate the helpful advice. I’m booked on AF round trip IAD-CDG April 16 to 29 and am worried about strikes on those days, as well as some short flights TLS-Orly within that time. (The short flights were purchased as a backup for SNCF rail tickets because as the poster above notes, there’s a strike ... trying to add some redundancy to my plans.) if I hear about an announced strike, what do you think is best way to reach the airline about rebooking? I’m worried the phone lines will be jammed. Is Twitter or FB Messenger a better way to get their attention? I dont have status on AF so no access to special phone lines. Thanks for your advice.

Welcome to FT Ckcomms :)
It's always hard to answer that kind of question as we don't really know. At the moment there is no strike announced for that period. And AF is handling the rebookings very well so you should not worry about this. Just wait to be closer to the departure date to see if there is something to do. And for the TLS segment, there are so many flights everyday on this route that there will be always one for you ;)
So, relax and hoping to read more posts from you in the future on this forum !

on 3 Apr, I was supposed to be on AMS-CDG-SFO, both legs DL-coded but KL- and AF-operated. As soon as the strike on 3 April was announced, I call the DL line and had the flight rebooked within 5 min on AMS-SEA-SFO (direct AMS-SFO was offered too, but I rather make a detour via SEA than fly KLM's B747 in Economy...). Everything very neat, quick, and professional.

It's just not worth the hassle at all. Decided on my upcoming work trip to just book BA instead of AF for MAD - LHR - ARN (Iberia and Norwegian direct times didn't work). I'm a ST person but not worth the hassle of having to check on whether there are strikes / flight cancellations during my meetings in Madrid, I'll survive without the extra few DL SkyPesos and the fact that BA is running a 777 from MAD - LHR is a nice benefit.

Seems like some bad timing, or maybe it was part of the timing to disrupt the operations that this is happening around the time of the change to the new Flying Blue program. Was just trying to log into the Air France site to check my flights, and got this:
"This service is temporarily unavailable as we put the new Flying Blue program online. Everything will go back to normal on Sunday, 1 April at 14:00, Paris time. Thank you for your understanding."

I have a couple of friends, French speaking, headed out to Cancun on the 30th. They were rebooked for Sunday 1st April, today, thus truncating their holiday but I managed to get them rerouted via Panama on the original date, the 30th.

Received e-mail from AF today about the April 3 strike -- looks like it's becoming more likely. I called them via the US Delta line and asked if I could be rebooked the same day for KLM or Delta.

They said yes, but that because DL and KL don't offer Premium Economy on my route, I'd have to take a downgrade to Y. I asked if I could receive downgrade compensation. They called AF directly and were told no. I said no thanks and that I'd take my chances.

Anyone had luck with such compensation for a voluntary downgrade? I don't expect the full 75% of fare normally required by EU law (since I'm willingly changing my flight instead of involuntarily), but suggesting passengers take different flights at a less ideal time with a longer layover in a lower class of service without compensating them is ridiculous. :td:

For the benefit of faraway pax, can we change the title of this thread to indicate that the next strikes are on 3rd and 7th April, not the 5th?

Let's do it all at once and also add the 10th & 11th of April to the thread title...
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https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-ai...-idUKKCN1H81H7

There was a hard pilot strike in the Summer of 2016 and AF yielded completely, in big part pressured by the Government. AF pilots basically took control of the company and its restructuring plans. They capped the development of Transavia France and since forced AF to use AF pilots for Joon.

They now ask for a raise of over 10% (6% for the other AF staff) and are confident that they will win again.The pilots are the leaders of the strike and it is doubtful that the strike would be effective without them. AF can wet lease a lot of planes for medium haul, but the situation is more difficult for longhaul, especially Asia and Africa.
Macron is not Hollande and the SNPL might be in for a surprise. Without laying blame on management, unions or government, it is clear that AF needs reform. Now that a hard prolonged strike has started, I hope that AF will not fully yield again. If they do and accept the raise requests with nominal concessions in return, then why not have not done it immediately?
Current market conditions are rather good for the airline industry but AF is not doing great. When market conditions worsen, AF will be again in lots of trouble unless they manage to increase productivity to align with competitions.