Air France?

[Zoe ENG]

Hello everybody. Has enyone had any experience with Air France? This is who I have to fly with but i am a VERY nervous flyer i only feel safe with Virgin flights. I have seen air france have a bad flight record and am quite scared to fly with them if i am honest. Thanks

 

[s3rndpt]

This probably belongs in a different forum, but if I had the chance, I would always fly Air France. I've had nothing but good experiences with them- the attendants are polite and friendly, and the food is the best I've had on an airline. In fact, I'm going to be spending a few $ extra this fall to fly AF to Italy instead of Delta or Alitalia.

 

[gatzsd]

Air France lost all our luggage and never found it. 3 weeks in Europe with a 3 year old with nothing but the clothes on our backs. Their customer service are all French and it makes it very difficult to communicate- I vowed never to fly them again.

 

[Zoe ENG]

Sorry about that - i am using this via my iphone app and i am not very good at navigating it as you can tell. I am slightly worried at the fact they dont speak much english (this happened to me in barcelona and nearly missed my flight because of trying to ask for directions and nobody spoke english) and they do not have a good safety record. Sorry to hear you lost your luggage that is not very professional of them

 

[cheryllarsen]

I used Air France and had a good experience!

 

[cheryllarsen]

I generally google and find reviews before I make a decision.

 

[tigger137]

Their customer service are all French and it makes it very difficult to communicate- I vowed never to fly them again.

Personally I think it's pretty good that a French airline has French customer service staff.

On several occasions over the last few years I've had problems communicating with United Airlines customer service staff who quite clearly are not American, are not speaking to me from America but from an overseas call centre, and whose first language is not English. Yet United professes to be an American airline.

I am slightly worried at the fact they dont speak much english (this happened to me in barcelona and nearly missed my flight because of trying to ask for directions and nobody spoke english)

If someone chooses to fly with a French airline then they should accept that the predominant language will be French. Although my experience has been that the majority of French people speak at least basic English, far more so than English people being able to speak basic French.

Similarly, if someone chooses to transit a foreign airport, it doesn't take much to learn a few simple phrases which may be of use - or at least to carry a phrase book so you can point at the relevant question.

French and Spanish are hardly minority languages - indeed, I believe Spanish is the 2nd most spoken language in the world after Mandarin.

If it really is too daunting a prospect to have to deal with people in any language other than English, then I'd suggest it would be best to only ever travel to/through English-speaking countries and with English-speaking airlines. (Although, as mentioned earlier, the latter doesn't give any guarantees when it comes to dealing with customer service.)

 

[tajz90]

Air France lost all our luggage and never found it. 3 weeks in Europe with a 3 year old with nothing but the clothes on our backs. Their customer service are all French and it makes it very difficult to communicate- I vowed never to fly them again.

Amen! Same exact experience. Family of 4, 3 weeks no clothes. I take that back, two weeks, half of our luggage was missing. We were at customer service trying to get lead and noticed the storage door room was ajar. I was so angry at this point from hearing they couldn't help us so i took liberty to walk inside. Lo and behold....what did I find? Yep, luggage! Ours! Duh!!!! And the lady was telling my husband she couldn't find it. Still had another week without most of our things.

 

[Drew770]

Hello everybody. Has enyone had any experience with Air France? This is who I have to fly with but i am a VERY nervous flyer i only feel safe with Virgin flights. I have seen air france have a bad flight record and am quite scared to fly with them if i am honest. Thanks

Hi Zoe!

I am a frequent international air traveler for business. I have the top tier statuses on several large carriers.

If you are concerned about the actual flights for AirFrance from a safety perspective please put your mind at ease. They are a very safe airline.

We could go into all the cliches about statistics and likelihood of injury or death but that never means anything. If you ask one of the flight attendants on the flight for recommendations on how to cope with being a nervous flier, they are very helpful.

I have flown Air France many times into some very backwater locations in Africa, Southeast Asia, and other places. They take very good care of their aircraft. My job when I was in the military was aviation logistics. To that end I worked very closely with the maintenance crews. Civilian Carriers are actually held to a higher standard than the military.

Absent that, discuss your anxiety with your Doctor before you leave. He may be able to prescribe something that is gentle and still able to take the edge off.

 

[gbaz44]

We flew AF last month and I have to say I enjoyed the experience. The food was decent/good. In flight entertainment was good, plenty of stuff to watch - we had same July package on return flight but still found more than enough to watch.

All staff were nice enough and any we encountered spoke good english - we had no issues so didn't have contact customer services.

Thankfully we were reunited with our luggage on way there and back. We did however have a handluggage case dedicated to carrying clothes in case anything happened on way there. You can fit quite a lot of shorts, T-shirts and underwear in just in case - but I'd do this no matter who I flew with.

 

[disneyholic family]

Air Chance?

my real problem flying with Air Chance is having to go through Charles De Gaulle Airport - not the most user friendly airport that ever walked the face of the earth..

 

[chmurf]

Air Chance?

my real problem flying with Air Chance is having to go through Charles De Gaulle Airport - not the most user friendly airport that ever walked the face of the earth..

when you come in through T1 it might feel confusing. This terminal is old (1974) and suffers from being from that era. Not that it is old per se, but because the architects wanted to make it "avant-garde" so they designed the airport not for function but for style.
Now the "style" is dated, and we want an airport to be functionnal and easy to navigate around. (failed ... 2 times)
Worst of all is that our "mnistere de la Culture" has placed the terminal into the "protected buildings" list, as part of our cultural heritage, and that limits how much construction can be done to make things better.
T1 uses sattelites around a central hub, this involves long walkways, and is a PITA when you're connecting to another terminal, or even another sattelite inside T1
those problems were identified, and that why T2 does not have the same design (when it was supposed to be like T1) and resembles more a regular US airport

Still, I use this airport since 1986 and once you understand (and accept) the layout, it's fairly easy to go around and pretty straightforward.

Now on the safety issue. It's true that AF does suffer from being the last one making the news (rio-paris) but I don't think there is a single airline with a clean record. And we all need to remember that flying is actually safer than driving or taking the bus.

Luggage loss ... well it happens, and it's a pain
from the latest statistics I found, luggage loss occur with AF, but AF loses less luggage (per 1000 passenger) than BA
Still european carriers (AF, BA, KLM) are 3 or 4 times more likely to mishandle luggage than US carriers
(some airlines Ryanair, VA, etc) refused to communicate on their lost luggage statistics ... I wonder why ...