V60t

After spending a few days in Paris with my kid brother, we decided to take a quick jump over the big puddle and head over to London for the day. To make a long story short I booked two tickets on Air France at 5PM 6/10/05 for a 10AM flight on 6/11/05.

Tickets were booked online through airfrance.com and I received a email confirmation of my Air France booking that clearly said my status was confirmed.

Upon arrival at CDG at 8AM on 6/11/05 the ticket agent spent about half an hour trying to find my reservation (I gave her the confirmation number, she said it didn’t help) so she sent us over to ticketing. Ticketing found the reservation however they told me that it wasn’t confirmed and there were no available seats on the flight and it had been oversold and offered to put me on the next flight out at 2PM. The agent blamed a “computer glitch.”

For a day trip, this would have put us in London for approximately 4 hours and wasn’t worth it. Has anyone seen a similar problem before? How was the situation alleviated?

number_6

Until the ticket is issued you don't have a "contract of carriage" which gives you some protections and entitlements. From your description it is very likely that Air France never did issue the ticket and your email confirmation is probably worded around that. This is common practice, almost all airlines operate this way and the actual ticket issue is a few hours after the booking is "confirmed". Most of the time that window isn't a problem. What you have to do is check the ticket status for being "ticketed". Your credit card should not have been charged. If your credit card was charged, you can argue that this is proof that the ticket was in fact issued and you can proceed appropriately.