Flight delay and cancellation compensation, KLM/AF ONLY

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  • Is it best to post a claim to Air France or send it via email?

    I have the address down as:

    Air France - Europe
    Customer Care Center
    TSA 21235
    75564 Paris Cedx 12
    France

    Email link is available on their website (i'm not allowed to post links yet)

    Seems they won't allow you to enter your flights details prior 2010 on their website so think i'll just post it.
  • Hi there - urgent advice appreciated on this one:

    Today's flight KL1672 due to have departed BCN for AMS at 1315 looks like it is being cancelled as I write. I have friends on it who have a connecting flight at Schipol to catch who have been offered a circuitious re-routing via other KLM destinations which will delay them by a total of about 6 hours at their final destination and guess who has to pick them up in the middle of the night!

    What general options may they have?

    How about an extra night in BCN on KLM? Or a right to book re-routing via another airline ?

    Anyone?
  • KL1672 currently showing a delay of 82 minutes as of 12.53pm UK time.

    Options if they miss their connection at AMS to final destination will depend on what flight options availableat the earliest opportunity to that destination with available capacity.
    Yes showing a delay at the moment but who knows what to believe as KLMs own website showed it as no problems and actually departed as at 13 mins past the scheduled time and it seems my friends were called to the desk for re-routing due to their connection ... the previous flight BCN-AMS was delayed and the next one is definitely cancelled.

    Their booking has been changed and they have to collect their baggage and check it in again on a Brussels airline flight to Brussels then to another intermediate airport then final destination near to midnight.
  • Ich_2
    Ich_2 Posts: 1,087 Forumite
    Looks like it is due to weather (snow) at Amsterdam Schipol

    http://www.schiphol.nl/Travellers/News/DelaysAndCancellations2.htm
  • 2sides2everystory
    2sides2everystory Posts: 1,744 Forumite
    edited 14 February 2013 at 2:07PM
    Yes thanks C100 and Ich.

    It seems a bit of a rushed re-routing and false information ("sorry that better last flight is full" - I have checked and it isn't) was given about a better re-routing that would have got them home 2 hours earlier via a closer home airport.

    They are about to embark on the round the houses re-routing now but then have 3 hours kicking their heels in Brussels which perhaps they can use to persuade someone to improve the re-routing. I have spoken to KLM by phone and they say only airport staff can help.

    I wonder who KLMs rep at Brussels will be ? I am not sure there is a KLM desk there ...

    Edit 1504: Meantime I don't know if they are still in BCN as they are now booked on SN3702 and I have no information on its status, but their original flight clearly wasn't delayed as long as first thought and is now in French airspace without them.

    Edit 1507: Ah I can see SN3702 is also about to enter French airspace - thank goodness for flightradar24.com!
  • Ich_2
    Ich_2 Posts: 1,087 Forumite
    Given the warning about Schipol, it's maybe best that they are being kept away from there in case of further cancellations
  • 2sides2everystory
    2sides2everystory Posts: 1,744 Forumite
    edited 14 February 2013 at 4:23PM
    Yes that could be so, but I would like their re-route to final destination to be improved when they land in Brussels shortly - since they are using other airlines for re-routing, there are still at least two better options avoiding AMS which both save 2 hours getting home.

    I just haven't yet found anyone in AirFrance KLM or working on their behalf to arrange it yet. It's that Cygnific outsource outfit which answers their phones on this kind of thing. I am waiting for a call from a 'senior' Cygnific person.

    Edit 1605UK time (just realised my earlier update times may have been CET): Update: Fingers crossed, said Cygnific person has called me back and offered to call the intrepid travellers directly now in Brussels Airport.

    Edit 1620 UK time: Cygnific have talked directly and have even been persuaded to talk directly to the other airline's desk agent at Brussels. Bag relabeling is in progress to a new last flight that gets to an airport closer to home and saves 2 hours ... what could possibly go wrong ? :p
  • 2sides2everystory
    2sides2everystory Posts: 1,744 Forumite
    edited 14 February 2013 at 5:49PM
    Colmorgan wrote: »
    We flew with Klm from ams to Dubai feb 2012, flight cancelled, put up in hotel, fed, flew next day got 50€ voucher each.
    Copied and pasted the standard letter in here last week asking for €600 each, within a week got £250 vouchers each so am pleased with that
    Very good to hear that they have the compensation claims handling sorted.

    Also, no thanks to Cygnific (they who are the atrocious sub-contracted excuse for AirFrance KLM Customers Services, and who are disgracefully argumentative and at best only ever do half a job, we have just optimised our re-routing and got boarding passes for it.

    It was a change of duty at the SAS desk at Brussels that unstuck a systems glitch which was not allowing them as the re-route airline to issue boarding passes for the past half hour.

    The Cygnific supervisor (for KLM) did half a job and got the flights changed on the Amadeus system. Although she did call my friend, in the end she did not speak with SAS. Clearly however, she did something that registered the new flights we wanted with SAS and on Amadeus. I could even see the changes using Amadeus "CheckMyTrip" application which I recommend, and via the View My Booking options on the SAS system to the re-routed destination. The KLM online system however had not been updated and the SAS agent was faced with a persistent wrong connecting flight when they tried to issue boarding passes.

    The fresh on duty local SAS agent decided it was a challenge and managed to sort out boarding passes. I saw the change had occurred when viewing the SAS Check In facility.

    Meantime I had already called Cygnific again to tell them the problem. They weren't much interested- I explained that it was causing unnecessary stress. Cygnific are in the Netherlands I think and they seem (from my experience of maybe fifteen calls with them over the last couple of years) to employ a lot of very argumentative (don't tell me how to do my job) females. This one said that it should not be causing stress because there was still 2 hours before the Brussels departure. I insisted it was again put to a supervisor and that they again call my friend directly.

    They called me back instead. Supervisor had said it is not KLMs problem that they had sent a new eticket to us by email and if we couldn't open it (as if that was the problem! - we weren't trying to open any email - we were trying to unstick a computer system KLM had left in disarray that would not allow a boarding pass to be issued by a desk agent who dearly wanted to do so!)

    Air France KLM need to learn big time from the p-poor reports like this. They do not help themselves when they fail to put resources behind re-routing tasks. If they had made a good job of re-routing instead of having hundreds of passengers running around like headless chickens today then they would likely not receive the delay compensation claims that they might now receive because customers like us might well think "KLM bloody well deserves it the way they gave us the runaround".

    It is an interesting one from a compensation point of view because:
    1) reason for re-routing was airline disorganisation on the first leg of a two-leg connecting flight all within EU, due to weather related but not weather caused disruptions.
    2) original re-routing would have made the customer 6 hours late arriving at original final destination and at midnight instead of 6pm - e.g. need for a hotel ?
    3) improved re-routing at our request was to a different final destination arriving 5h45m later than original schedule but at an airport 1h30m hour closer to home by car - no question of a hotel being needed.

    Interestingly the View My Booking option on the KLM site now has a lame notice in the corner saying Compensation Entitlement GBP2.00 for all passengers with a button to click to Claim Compensation :rotfl:
  • MissBailey
    MissBailey Posts: 959 Forumite
    edited 15 February 2013 at 9:51AM
    I have also had my flight to Amsterdam cancelled today. We were due to fly at 6am from Cardiff but it was cancelled yesterday just after 5pm. It was due to weather conditions however when I've checked arrivals at Schipol there are other KLM flights that landed at the same time? Also despite there being seats available in Business on a flight from the same airport at 10:30am they have re-routed us to Bristol at 5.20pm meaning we miss a whole day pretty much and have to travel further to get our flight. Is this acceptable practice? Do I have any comeback at all? When I spoke to Customer Services (who were abysmal by the way and only let me hold to speak to an advisor when I selected the option that I wanted to purchase a ticket, and even then it took 45mins to get to speak to anyone.) it was only 12hours to the 10.30 flight so it was unlikely to fill up.

    I'd be grateful if anyone has any advice. Thanks

    ETA: I've just double checked and as far as I can see mine is one of only two cancelled flights at Schipol between 8am and 10am!
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  • Hello, Need your help here. I travelled from Manchester to Bangalore on 4th Nov 2011 in Air France. Below is the information derived from Flightstats.

    06.50 MAN to 08.50 Paris - Flight was on time.
    Connecting flight - 10.35Am Paris to Bangalore - Flight was delayed to 12.11pm but still we were put in a hotel till next day.

    Can I claim for me being made to stay in Paris for a day and if yes, by how much?

    Thanks.
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