We received the following letter from a David Gottlieb via comment on another post. We’ve removed it and placed it here. Nothing we can say will fix the situation. But we do have a few thoughts.
The following took place 2 AM Friday to 1 PM Saturday2:00 AM - Jet Blue cancels our flights to NY (9 of us) but never lets us know. I only found out by accident being the dope I was that I was still awake and decided to get my boarding pass. I then start calling my friends to wake them up to explain we need an alternate route to NY. I tried calling Air France to what their story was going to be but that was no good because they close at 9 pm and have no customer service at night!! 2AM to 8AM - contacted Jet Blue and many other airlines to bring us to JFK to make the AIR FRAnce 10 PM flight as Air France claimed no matter what they never cancel and we better get there or the tickets were completely non refundable. 10 total including my mom who was joining us in NY. I tried but to no avail could not get other flights due to sell out situations and cancellations. 1000 AM – I decided to try to go to Long Island and get a car service to JFK so I booked Southwest, 1230 FLT into Islip at 3PM , Hired a van to pick up 9 people for ride from ISLIP TO JFK We now have one hour to get ready and leave the house not thinking we would have to leave at that time, race to the airport, as we’re getting close its pouring so I call my stepmom and ask her to check the Southwest status so I don’t have to race in the rain if it were going to be delayed and find out that now this flight is cancelled. 11:30 - PARK CAR at Airport, flight cancelled and no way to go to NY so we go inside and spend two hours trying to negotiate a flight anywhere within 5 hours of NY and we were then going to drive to JFK not wanting to lose our money for the air France flight. To no avail, we could not do it so we just went home. From the house we tried everything again, calling all airlines and pleaded with Air France to move us to the next day. They said no, tickets are non refundable and our only option was to pay a $200 a seat penalty and change of fair which was almost $2,000 per ticket! 12:30 – Inevitably there was no airline seat to NY so we cannot make Air France 10 PM flight 1:00 PM - 10:00 PM – We sat for the next 9 hours watching the weather and the computer screen hoping AF will cancel flight or ticket money is lost. We again called air france and plead with them to no avail. Three of us tried and spoke to 9 different people, no one was helpful. 10:00 - Air France flight show still on time but hasn’t taken off. 11:00 - still scheduled but changed to 11:59 SATURDAY 2 AM - still scheduled to go but now 2 am. I am now looking at Cruises and alternate trips out of Florida realizing the Italy trip we spent 7 months planning was gone. 2:30 AM – Not having a lot of luck finding any cruises with 5 rooms left for the next day so I go to bed wondering if the flight ever left. 5:00 AM - flt takes off 7 hrs late ticket money non refundable 8:00 AM – researching any possible trip to Europe on Monday or Tuesday. Get together with my friends, 3 laptops together and calling all the travel agents telling them we’ll basically go anywhere over 50 degrees. Where is the most affordable and every time we tried to book something during the two minute period from researching to hitting submit the tickets were going up triple in price. After 6 hours of this we finally completely gave up. 2:00 pm - no cruises, maybe another country, internet useless and my friend Kari tells LLOYD at Expedia after 1 hour and 20 minutes on the phone with an incompetent agent that she was prepared to drive to Atlanta immediately to his office to kick his ass as he had been so completely unhelpful after his employee quoted us all sorts of pricing to Paris, we went to book it and then prior to the agent hitting submit we lost the pricing. Lloyd tells us that’s just the way it is and Expedia can do nothing about it. WE LOSE $3,000 PER FAMILY!!! AIR FRANCE WILL DO NOTHING FOR US, NO CREDIT, NOTHING. 7:00 pm – We just took the four suitcases out of the car, meticulously packed to empty them and officially cancel our vacation plans.
Here is our advice:
- Always buy insurance that covers the full value of your trip if you go abroad. Trip insurance covers trip delays, missed connections, and other failures.
- If possible, always buy a single ticket. If you purchase separate tickets, neither carrier considers itself responsible. If you purchase a single ticket, even with two carriers on it…they are bound by certain regulations. You can review some of that in this post of ours. Specifically, carriers on the same ticket are all subject to IATA Rule 735D, which governs their actions in this circumstance.
- The Air France USA Customer Relations department is coincidently, in Florida. Their address is:
- Air France Customer Relations
P.O. Box 459000
Sunrise, FL 33345-9000
- Air France Customer Relations
- You can try the online claim form on their website here.
- Once you file a claim you can call them. They need it in writing first.
- You can go after Jetblue for a voucher or something…but they weren’t obligated to help you make your flight and I assume they would offer you your money back. You could write them a letter anyway…but they have advised they are experiencing delays in returning queries due to high volume of late.
- Keep us posted on it. Businesses hate internet publicity. It is bad for business. We’ll be happy to spread the word.