Air France comes under fire again

For the second time in a month, Air France has been accused of ill-treating 11 Indian passengers who spent nearly 13 hours at Paris airport on a bottle of water and half-a-sandwich each after their flight was delayed by a technical snag on May 24. The airline has regretted the incident and promised to look into the allegations.

Just a fortnight ago, on May 10, 53 Indians on board flight AF-218 from Boston to Mumbai spent 11 hours in the transit lounge of Charles de Gaulle Airport with virtually no food. Just this week the airline offered vouchers worth 350 euros (Rs23,500) for future travel to each of them as compensation, but they refused to accept them and demanded an apology.

Narrating the latest ordeal, Jagdish Patankar, 47, said: “We boarded flight AF-025 on May 24 at 6:45pm at Dulles Airport in Washington. But the pilot said the flight had developed a snag and we were deplaned.”  

It took the airline three hours to rectify the snag. The flight with 174 passengers on board finally took off at 9:45pm (7:15am IST), said Patankar, managing director of a Worli-based event management company, MM Activ.

The flight landed at de Gaulle Airport at 10:20am (1:50pm IST) on May 25, but the Indians missed their 10:45am (2:15pm IST) connecting flights to Mumbai, Delhi, and Bangalore. “Our troubles began soon after,” Patankar said.

The airline, he said, told the passengers that the next connecting flight to Mumbai was 24 hours later and they would have to spend the night at the airport. “While our European co-passengers were given hotel accommodation, the airline said the police denied had transit visas to Indians,” said Gwyneth Alphonso, 39, another Indian who got stuck in Paris.

No airline official attended to them from 11am (2.30pm IST) to 3 pm (6.30 pm IST) and they had to go without food and water, the Indians said. “It was clearly discrimination against us as Europeans were treated well and we were left to wait at the airport,” she alleged.

“There was a cafeteria, but we needed to clear security checks to go there. Since our passports and visas were with the airline, we couldn’t even buy food,” Alphonso said.
Among the passengers were a diabetic, Dr P Mathew Varghese, and a 65-year-old woman with her 15-month-old granddaughter. “We literally begged for chocolates and other eatables from international passengers who were passing by to get something for Dr Varghese and the baby,” Alphonso said.

The Indians then ran out of patience and protested, forcing the airline to give them a 200ml water bottle and half-a-sandwich each.

“We demanded that the airline put us on the next connecting flight to Dubai,” Patankar said. Air France put them on flight AF-530 from Paris to Dubai, which was to leave at 11:20pm (2:50pm IST).

“Even this flight had a technical snag and left an hour late. But we reached Dubai around 8:52am local time (10:52am IST), just in time to catch the Emirates EK-506 Dubai-Mumbai flight,” Patankar said.

Other Indians took flights to Bangalore and Delhi. Some of the passengers landed at Mumbai airport at 2pm on May 26 but without their baggage. “I got my luggage on May 27, but certain items were missing,” Patankar said.

When contacted, an Air France spokesperson blamed the trouble on visa formalities imposed by the French police but said none of the Indian passengers had to spend the night at Paris airport. The spokesperson, in an emailed statement, promised to investigate the matter and try and improve transit procedures at de Gaulle Airport.