deveras

I just went through a curious experience with Air France and Delta that might be illustrative for American travelers.


Put briefly, I was on a recent flight from Spain to South Africa, and my connecting flight from Barcelona to Paris was delayed (for mechanical reasons earlier in the day, as confirmed by the pilot and the crew). I missed my connection to Johannesburg, and was told I’d be delayed by 12 hours (overnight) until the next available flight. At the airport passengers were told about our rights to claim EU 261 compensation through Air France.


I claimed several days later on Air France’s website with my home address in the US, and 30 days after that (the statutory limit to respond), I received an email from Delta customer service in Atlanta, who apparently handles Air France/KLM customers located in the US.


Delta told me that the delay was air traffic / weather related in nature, not a covered delay by law, and I was due nothing. I insisted, copied a supervisor, and after four back-and-forths was offered 9,000 Skymiles as a “goodwill gesture” (in lieu of the 600 euros owed by EU law) and an apology that the answer "was different than I was expecting". I refused the Skymiles, and said I would pursue my case with the Spanish regulator responsible for enforcing claims.


Frustrated, I resubmit the claim to Air France with my address in Spain (I have an apartment there), and less than 24 hours afterwards, Air France customer service (which apparently handles European customers) responds that I was unequivocally due 600€ compensation from a technical delay, explained the exact nature of the delay, and the very next day I received the compensation from the airline.


I battled with Delta for weeks about the exact same thing that Air France handled in less than 24 hours, and it made me think: how many Americans due compensation from Air France / KLM are told lies by Delta to evade this responsibility?



It seems the Air France website kicks all EC 261 inquiries originating in the US to Delta, and Delta handles them in a totally different manner than Air France would handle them (perhaps assuming that Americans don’t know that much about the regulation).



Not sure what to do with this, but I feel like Delta owes me at least an apology, and I'd love to know how this is possible.

MSPeconomist

WOW, good to know.

BTW, in your dealings with DL, did you challenge their assertion that ATC was the cause of the delay?

deveras

Absolutely. I explicitly mentioned in my correspondence that the AF pilot and ground staff told all passengers over the loudspeaker that there was a mechanical delay earlier in the day that required them to swap out the aircraft (causing the downstream delays). We were met by a ground agent that confirmed this, and took us to rebooking personally. There were more than 50 passengers on the flight that had overnight delays due to the missed connection, and I think the pilot was sympathetic to the situation.

Delta asserted (three separate times in three emails) that their flight operations team (and Air France's flight operations team) said the cause of the delay was ATC, and asserted the pilot gave me incorrect information!

LondonElite

You won't get an apology from DL, so forget that. AF is far more accustomed to handling these things than DL is, simply because every single one of their flights has possible EC261 exposure, whereas only a small subset of DL flights do. But good result nonetheless!

deveras

Oh I get that, but if you submit (as a US resident) a claim on AF's site, DL customer service handles your claim.

I'm wondering how many US residents get the run around on claim due to them by AF because of a combination of DL stonewalling and US customers not really knowing the law that well.

EC 261 applies to everyone. I shouldn't have a different response to the same claim based on my home address.

mot29

I wonder if this isn't one of those cases that is worth a letter to the exec suite contacts. Some of it is likely that the DL agents don't completely understand EU261 and maybe DL needs to train better.

flyerCO

The problem is that DL can only go by what AF shows it the system . If the last delay activity is ATC, then that's what DL sees.

What you should have said is that AF says it was mechanical. Dont attribute it to a pilot, FA, or anyone other than AF CS. Doing so just causes them to ignore.

This was actually more AF system not showing to DL anything other than the last delay activity. I've had this happen before and DL CS agent had to call AF and ask them to pull the full delay record.

MSPeconomist

The problem here is that most DL passengers/customers don't know this while the DL employees handling EC261 claims should know it and especially should contact AF and check the circumstances very carefully when a customer repeatedly tells DL that the reason for an AF delay was MX earlier in the day. Ignoring the details and re-sending the same boilerplate canned message is not the way DL should be doing customer service.

flyerCO

I agree there. However I'm sure they're used to being told "so and so said it was." Why I suggested not mentioning who said it, so it sounds like AF CS said it.

ijgordon

FWIW my sister and her husband were just over 4h delayed on an AF flight IAD-CDG due to late inbound due to mechanical. They put the claim in when they got home (to the US) and were paid tout de suite.
I had a misconnection and 24 hr delay on ZRH-CDG-JFK and I didn’t even file for comp (not sure why TBH) and was proactively sent an €800 voucher (I was in LaPremiere not sure if that had anything to do with it). Then later when I realized I couldn’t redeem it for someone else, I called and they switched it to the €600 cash at which point I realized it was the EC261 comp...

So 2 data points flying AF with a US address where it worked as expected or better.

deveras

FWIW - I told the agent that the customer service staff from AF gave me this reasoning. I had mentioned the pilot and the ground staff when insisting (thinking, maybe incorrectly, that it would help to be more specific).

I think what grates me the most is that Delta very clearly gave me a boilerplate response on email one. DL gave me an incorrect reason for the delay on email two. And then on insisting, told me they verified this information with both DL and AF flight operations teams on email three. It's very clear that either

1) they don't have access to the same information, in which case DL should not be processing AF 261 claims
2) they are banking on me giving up, because it's annoying to go back and forth with Delta reps

Either way, DL should not be doing this.

deveras

This is precisely what happened. My generous, magnanimous side says that Delta should do a better job at training their staff on EC 261 claims. My cynical, I've-been-through-this-before side says it suits both Delta and AF mighty fine to have a team of folks with incomplete information on expensive claims.

FBplatinum

I have an EC261 in past November (2019) with AF (CDG-PVG) in "J", for mechanical delay. They even transfer me to the MU flight (China Eastern) because the delay will be more than 8h (I get the last seat in "J").

I also be redirected to AF/KLM/Delta USA (I think), because I am Canadian it is possible I have be send to AF/KLM/Delta Canada.

I receive full compensation (€600).
.
I am SM Diamond AND FB Platinum... (possible this have help).
It take nearly one month (I must twitter them)

sannmann

This sounds like a story that Chris Elliott should cover.

GateGuardian

That's good to know. Once you cash in your check, I would recommend opening a separate ticket complaining about this, so they can train the US staff properly.