Fly me to the Stars

Last week I had to make a connection from Copenhagen through CDG and was booked on an AF flight. During boarding I noticed the extremely tight pitch and when I sat down my knees were against the seat in front me.

After the door was closed the following announcement was made: "Ladies and gentlemen welcome onboard AF flight xxx operated by Euralair" EURALAIR??? Turns out this plane was in a charter configuration and had 184 seats (737-800). AF must have leased it for some reason or other.

What really makes me angry is that I'd never heard of Euralair and that we weren't informed about the switch before we boarded the plane. There are certain airlines that I refuse to fly and if I'm scheduled to travel on an unknown airline I will do some research to make sure it is safe (in my mind).

This is just another reason for me to avoid AF.

ahrz

Euralair is a french company specialized in the following fields :
- aircraft maintenance for other companies
- business jets renting

Euralair is providing aircrafts to the leading french travel agents (GO voyages, FRAM) for charter flights.
The 737-800 is a brand new aircraft, but may be in a "charter" configuration.

It is possible that AF chartered a plane by Euralair if there was a problem with the own aircraft.

This is not a problem, since european carriers never use "cheap" airlines to fly under their own flight numbers !

It happened to me by Lufthansa, there was a problem with the plane at CDG, and they chartered one from 'Germania' instead of cancelling the flight (it was the last evening flight to Munich).

---

Some Lufthansa flights within Germany or Europe are operated by partners (Augsburg airways, etc.) on smaller planes.

At least one Lufthansa flight from Munich to Frankfurt is operated by Condor, under LH flight number.

British Airways flights within Germany are operated by Deutsche BA, which may be "unknown" to most american people...

Do you know Augsburg Airways, Contact Air, Rheintalflug ? They all fly under Lufthansa flight numbers and "colors" (Team Lufthansa).
----

If you want to avoid this in all cases, you may have to avoid Europe !!

YVR Cockroach

This seems to be an increasing trend but I'm surprised to see a substitution between two E.U. capitals given that A probably has spare aircraft at CDG.

FWIW, SN is (or was) using Virgin Express between LHR and BRU. A good lot of BA flights within the U.K. and others to secondary/regional/tourist/low-yield market destinations are operated by franchise carriers.

felis

That is that there is often no spare plane in Roissy.
Never heard of Euralair before.
I agree that I do not like to fly in such condutons. It happened to me last year on AOL. I paid a ticket on AOL becasue I refused to fly Crosair, a competitor, atht makes charters flight ORY-Rodez.
The flight was cancelled, and we were put on Crossair, no room, charter configuraition. I complained, but was denied any compensation, and WAS EVEN denied any miles, becuase the rate was cheap, however 50% more than the usual one on crossair.

I can not believe that europe will provide such bad conditions. We european must not accept tthat, but write letters, if not more.

Fly me to the Stars

I have no problem with flying on franchise partner aircraft and have flown on Crossair (Swissair) and DAT (Sabena) many times. My problem is that we were not informed about the flight being operated by another carrier before boarding.

It may not seem like a problem to you but if I buy a ticket on AF I expect more legroom than on a charter flight. The least AF could have done was explain the situation instead of just pretending that nothing was out of the usual.

Scandinavian Airlines had a flight leaving very close to our departure time and I would have taken that flight instead of Euralair if AF had been honest. But maybe that was the point, once we were all seated and the door was closed we were a captive audience.

I will continue to fly within Europe and continue to fly on codeshare partners, but I expect (and this has always been the case) to be told who actually operates the flight I'm on. So there!