France is very egalitarian and anyone with a shining car or card is frowned upon if not worse. Government bureaucrats and politicians might be the exception but it is the local culture and must be "accepted" in a French semi-government company.
After talking with AF high-ups for many years, I also believe that AF thinks that the shining cards can buy the expensive tickets, so upgrading them means losing money in the long run as they will expect it and tend to buy cheaper tickets in the expectation of being upgraded.
When I see how CX treats its top FFP it clearly shows a very different approach.

Nor is there a lounge.

In any case the experience is varied.

On the CDG - MRS sector was told no priority handling luggage tags but on MRS - CDG the girl automatically put the stickers on .

And did your bag arrived first ?

I agree but I also believe that it's only half the story. Indeed the laws, institutions, "public eye", etc all is very egalitarian. There also is a lot of jealousy, especially material, coupled with a lot of "why does he make 10 times more money" (be prepared for some funny looks when you ask back "so why didn't you make an effort to do the same?").

But then this also is a Latin country where the "anonymous collectivity" and its institutions may be egalitarian, but the "tribe", i.e. family, close relations, etc are very important, and you'd do everything to please them/protect them/favour them. Which explains things like staff and their families being more important than customers/passengers, which explains that you get great treatment in a restaurant once you know the owner but otherwise the experience may be "variable", which explains why the corruption index in France is higher than in Anglo-Saxon or Northern European societies. The trick to get good customer service in France is to put yourself in a position where you are not in a "the client is king" (implying "...and thus you are my servant") but where you are "we are equal, I appreciate your work/your experience/your effort/it matters to me personally". If you create that rapport, you get customer service which is way more personal, caring, reliable than anywhere else. Because then he does it for you, not because you are any customer, but because he likes you.

Summary: not egalitarian at all, things work very well for those in the know or having a personal rapport to those who can move things.

Thus: C2000 being something "public" which is given to people that the individual AF employee doesn't know there will be no public benefits (the public would cry out) nor will the individual AF employee bend his back to do anything special for someone he doesn't know, C2000 or not. Unless there is a personal relationship.

And to prove brunos' point: on a flight yesterday with Mrs. creber (Platinum as well) and 2 kids, in longhaul Affaires. Although we had confirmed child meals for some reason they had distributed all the child meals to Eco passengers, probably not checking whether they are supposed to have them or not. When I suggested to the CDC how "good airlines" have a procedure where they first look after status pax and their party he replied that he couldn't do that because it would create inequality among pax. I had to bite my tongue not to say "but some pax are worth more than others" and not to add "so why do you do it for your own buddies". But then I did that rapport thing and he was super nice with us, the kids, we had a long chat, etc. The thing is that in the beginning he didn't care about our child meals, we were just another pair of anonymous passengers. By the end he really regretted that we hadn't had them and he was running through the cabin to see whether he could take it away from someone else (I told him not to do that)

libert�, egalit�, fraternit�

I'd wish they add "responsabilit�", "sens civique" and "service client"

EDIT: and after just having gone through 2D: how could I forgot "pragmatism"!!!In the French context I'd exchange some "fraternit�" against a good dose of "pragmatism" any day!!!

Totally true. The only part I would question is whether this is so totally 'France-specific'. I mean I think it is even more exacerbated in France or Italy than elsewhere but for instance, 'friends and family upgrades' are in no way rarer on KL than they are on AF, and while they seem to me to be rarer on BA, examples are by no means rare. In terms of restaurants too, for instance, I see no difference between the restaurants where I have been a regular in London as those where I have been a regular in France. Indeed, some of my London favourites won't let me come a single time without the manager treating us to some thing(s) be it extra courses, extra drinks, discounts. And even in my professional interactions, some companies we work with have staff who will do things 'for me' which they wouldn't do for others or which other companies where I don't know my interlocutors personally would not do for me. I think that the conception of 'customer is king' comes across as (for lack of a better word) very "American" across much of Europe and will often be perceived as counter productive. Similarly, the perception that 'elite customers always think they are entitled to everything while they really are pompous asses' is shared (maybe not entirely without reason in the sense that some do behave that way?) by frontline staff of most airlines I use across Europe and whenever I have to request something on the ground, whether I deal with AF, BA, LX or most other I often signal upfront that I am not coming with a sense of entitlement.

I guess that in many ways, there is in France an additional problem which adds to the one you describe which is that often, French people associate a negative connotation to the concept of 'service' as though it was necessarily putting oneself in an inferior position and prefer to conceive their work in more 'technical' terms. Thus, by and large, I find waiters even in the smallest restaurants far more skilled and professional in France than in the UK (unless you go to the cream of the crop of course, but here I am talking low, mid and even 'upper mid' restaurants) but as you say, often not overwhelmingly friendly. In France, a good waiter is not the one who smiles and makes you feel at ease but the one who can carry 46 plates on one arm looking like he's walking empty-handed! I think that with the friendly attitude that you describe on the part of the customer which indeed often works as magic, you 'tell' your waiter(ress)/steward(ess)/etc that (s)he is not your servant but your host(ess) and suddenly that's a role in which they want to give their best. Anyway, just a slightly different interpretation of the 'reason why' but leading to exactly the same recommendation on how to deal/not to deal with AF personnel.

This being said, shocking that you didn't get your pre-booked child meals. I find this really bad indeed.

We are in full agreement. I was more hinting to the fact that to get something properly done in France you'd better be on friendly terms with staff, otherwise you might not even get the most basic customer service. In the UK etc as well you go a lot further when you are known to be "a friend of the family/company", but even without that you get a minimum of service and reliability - unlike France.

All this explains why AF has so much difficulty going the extra mile for their status pax.

NB: I recognize of course all of my points (and yours) are of course a generalization and over-stating the phenomenon. Purely for the sake of discussion and to illustrate a pattern of something so fuzzy as cultural or mentality differences.

NB child meals: that happens around 2/3 of times on AF. Dis-organized and unpragmatic, didn't I say so?

Just to interject in your discussion about child meal, my daughter flew with her young son to Asia in Biz for the holidays and requested child meal. Never got it. Actually, she hardly got a meal for herself (biz pax were served Y meals).

I also would like to respectfully disagree with Orbitmic about "all airlines are equal". I do not fly KL so cannot comment. But on all the good airlines I fly, including BA, I have never seen anything approaching what happens on AF to "touristic" destinations (JFK, BKK, HKG, etc..). As soon as the door closes AF staff/family and friends (those on GP or with a connection to some AF staff) invade the J cabin. Last year I counted no less than 8 people standing in the J galley with their chocolate bag. They might have been more waiting in the Y galley, where they usually congregate for discretion reasons. I am not talking about pre-boarding opups. I am talking about a not-full Y cabin and pax being upgraded without the need for their Y seats. And they received much more service attention from the FAs than regular J pax (that is the most frustrating part). This was my last LH flight with AF.

I certainly didn't want to suggest that all airlines are equal - and indeed specified that F&F upgrades on BA are much rarer. I was just saying that they are not unheard of. I have witnessed some several times (on both short and long haul, including having the person next to me having plainly chatted to me about her boyfriend piloting the plane today and a few minutes before take off, being not so discretely approached by a crew member and asked if she was [first name] to then be escorted upfront). There are threads currently on the BA forum about the experience of one of the moderators who was similarly quite shocked by upgrades of what he suspected to be cabin crew children. But again, I fully concur with you that AF and KL seem to make this a recurrent practice as opposed to a relatively rare one on BA.

Re both your (daughter's) and creber's experience on child meals, this is truly shocking. There is no excuse for not delivering pre-ordered meal unless some major incident (e.g. plane change, etc) occurs and the regularity with which people seem to be suffering this is simply unacceptable.

I agree with most written above. Being frriendly and polite towards AF staff will almost certainly give you something extra in return. But I find being polite and friendly more than normal. It's just a bit more sensitive in French culture than in, for example, Dutch culture.

Regarding status. I have observed that French LOVE status. For example. Very often at 2F I see that the elite/biz security line is MUCH longer and slower than the Y line. But it's the elite line...and you've got an oportunity to show the world you're an elite...or is there another reason why you wouldn't choose for efficiency in such a situation?

Some posts that were not focused on Club 2000 or, by extension, on status at Air France or in France have been moved to other threads:

- http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/air-f...tries-cdg.html
- http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/air-f...-crossing.html

Thanks for your understanding.

Jouy31
AF/KL co-moderator

Is the Skippper designation still used? For some reason, my last BP came with ELITE/SkyPriority/FB Skipper. Today I was trying to purchase an additional piece of luggage and it says, under my name, "Flying Blue Skipper" and then 1 Piece + 1 Elite.

I have flown just over 20,000 miles this year credited to FB, so clearly I'm not part of Club2000 by any means. Is the Skipper word just a system glitch?

Which FB status do you actually have? (writing from the iPhone app sp can't see your profile)