nwflyboy

We are currently traveling in Europe (not in areas that have been greatly impacted by covid-19 as of yet). Our return flights back to the USA (in about a week from now) go through CDG, then onward to SEA, award tickets on AF in J.

I’m not fearful and not making any changes to our plans. My only concern is if AF reduces their schedule or starts canceling flights (specifically our flights home). I know that with current virus concerns, demand for air travel is down (significantly), and some airlines have reduced their schedules (and not just canceling service to China or Italy). My question is: has Air France reduced frequencies or canceled flights?

Thanks.

Goldorak

of course they have ! Most of the cancelled and frequency reductions have been to Asia, Italy and Israel so far. But more will come for sure.
US flights have not been affected so far. If your flight was cancelled, you will be rebooked for free, do not worry about this.

Carpacchio

They plan do reduce their flight plan by about 25%, but it seems this is majorly for the short haul traffic in Europe:

2. Flight schedule to and from Europe:

We are monitoring the situation in real time and adapt our flight schedule in line with demand: we reduce our capacities by 25% in March across our European network.
We reduce our capacities to Italy by 50% while maintaining our flights to all our destinations in Italy.

Otherwise, there are only reductions to Asia and Israel - nothing specific to the US yet.

Source: https://www.airfrance.de/DE/de/commo...441.1583647258

brunos

As you know quite well, Seattle is an epicenter of the coronavirus. It is likely that DL and AF will consolidate their frequency as the loads are very light.
I suggest that you regularly check if your flight is still operating and what options are available if cancelled.

irishguy28

Every airline on the planet has cancelled flights and trimmed their schedules...

Zembla

I know for a fact that CDG-IAH (and back) has been cancelled today, and people are rebooked through other routing. Wouldn’t surprise me that this is because of low loads. Reportedly the load was very low in the past days.

mikem004

Do you have a connecting flight to CDG in your itinerary, such as xx-CDG-SEA?
If so, you may want to check that it will be operating.

Zembla

Quite interestingly, my JFK-ORY in two weeks from now has also been cancelled, and I have been rebooked to CDG instead. So yes, US flights are affected as well..

nwflyboy

Thanks all. Yes, we are scheduled to return from IST late next week: IST - CDG - SEA, all on AF.

We are in Turkey right now. Our outbound AF flights last week (both SEA-CDG, and CDG-IST) were pretty full (to my surprise). Turkey has been the odd man out, with zero reported cases of COVID-19 to date (of course, that may or may not reflect the reality on the ground, and even if it does, it’s just a matter of time before it appears here). That said, it seems that tourism is down here too, though not as dramatically as elsewhere. It’s a bit ironic, folks back home in Seattle tell us we are so brave to be traveling, but I figure we are probably safer here than at home.

I will be watching my email for any notifications from Air France (hopefully they are being proactive about schedule changes - but I will try to monitor flight status manually as we get closer to our flight date).

Zembla

I can confirm from my own experience they are very proactive with schedule changes. Today I got automatically rebooked after schedule changes, then called them to modify because I didn’t like the flights they rebooked me on. All at no additional cost.

Zembla

JOUY31 , shouldn’t this go to the AF forum?

johan rebel

"Air France-KLM said that Air France expects to cancel 3,600 flights in March, reducing long-haul capacity by 13% from its initial schedule, with KLM also expecting a reduction on long-haul operations at a similar level.Air France also expects to reduce capacity by 25% in its European network and 17% in its domestic network."

Source

Johan

Goldorak

I will not ceased to be extremely surprised about the reaction of most people that are in total panic when it comes to travel. They don't realize that the risk could be the same or higher at home. Airlines are reporting massive cancellations also for the summer, while there is no reason to cancel a summer booking now. We can thank the media for this, as well as all the companies who totally forbid business trips in all regions without valid reasons (instead of forbidding only in selective countries/regions).

nwflyboy

Well, we got the cancelation email today - looks like it was sent out exactly one week ahead of the scheduled departure (in case it helps others, it appears the timing was quite specific, and it looks like they are canceling exactly 1 week in advance of departure times).

Email says our CDG-SEA flight is canceled (the first leg IST-CDG appears still intact). Nothing is rebooked yet (email says they’ll get to that ASAP). There’s one nonstop (AF/DL codeshare) that I’d like to be rebooked on (rather than one of many routings with multiple connections) but it seems we are at their mercy for rebooking. It appears I can’t rebook or select the rebooked flight online (have tried many ways, but we’re limited to phones and an iPad, no laptop/computer here), via browsers or the AF mobile app; that seems broken or not available. Evidently we have to call, which is problematic (we have SIMs but our plan doesn’t allow international calls, so we can’t call the US or French CS numbers). Our hotel was kind enough to try calling the AF Turkey office (presumably in Istanbul) using their phone, but we just were left on hold until after that office’s closing time. I will try that again in the morning but so far it has been frustrating.

irishguy28

Download Skype on your iPad or smartphone. Then you can call any landline (or mobile) anywhere globally for a matter of pennies.