My Air France flight from Los Angeles to Paris was cancelled and we lost our day in Paris, but at least we will get €2400 out of it thanks to EU261/2004.
Air France Flight Cancelled
That flight diversion I wrote about earlier today ended up impacting my family. We showed up at the airport about 2.5 hours ahead of our Air France flight to Paris and noticed the check-in area was empty. Odd.
The agent checked us in, tagged our bags, and then handed me our four boarding passes. I looked at them to see if we got PreCheck and then noticed that instead of being on AF69, we were on AF4083 and instead of departing at 6:25 pm on January 4th, we were departing at 2:55 pm on January 5th.
I asked the agent about it and she said, “Oh, tonight’s flight cancelled. Didn’t you know?”
No, actually we didn’t…despite signing up for text message and email alerts, no one let us know our flight had been cancelled. I received a call from Zurich earlier that day, which I did not answer, but no message was left.
When I had checked in for the flight the evening before, there was no indication of the cancellation. Of course, I neglected to check the flight status before we left for the airport and we now found ourselves at LAX ready to fly…without a flight.
The station manager came over and explained the plane that had been needed for our flight had taken off from Paris, but then turned around. Upon looking, I found the flight had experienced an engine shutdown earlier in the day due a loss of oil pressure.
Air France runs three flights per day from LAX and there was a 9:55pm flight departing in a few hours. I asked about it and he said it was full. This wasn’t my first time at the rodeo and I knew we could probably get on it on a standby basis, but I did not push it because 1.) the flight would certainly be close to full and 2.) therefore, we might find ourselves separated on the plane. I was not about to fly to Paris in a middle seat.
He said there were no other options (again, I could have pushed to be put on SWISS or Lufthansa), but I decided to accept the overnight delay because it meant we would arrive into Paris more than six hours late and therefore be eligible for €600 each under EU261/2004, which governs airline delays and cancellations in the European Union.
At this point, we could have gone home (about an hour away with traffic at that hour), but we were all packed, the house was clean, and therefore we took hotel and meal vouchers instead and decided to have a family staycation near LAX. I requested the Hyatt Regency, but was told Air France partnered with the Sheraton Gateway.
Hotel and meal vouchers were prepared in an old-school style on paper then handed to us.
Our bags had already been sent away so we had to wait a bit for them to be brought back, but were soon our way to the Sheraton for the night.
With the revised departure time the following afternoon, we would now arrive into Paris with a four-hour layover ahead of our train trip to Basel. I suppose I could have asked for a re-route to Basel or Zurich, but did not want to jeopardize our EU261/2004 credit. Sadly, that meant no stay at the Hyatt Madeleine and no visit to the Eiffel Tower for Augustine. No matter…we will return.
CONCLUSION
Our trip to Europe is off to a flying start…or something like that. While the obligatory delay compensation makes the blow a little severe, I was reminded again to always check flight status before departing and that sometimes the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry…
Ha! My wife would have given me so much (faux) grief for being the plane expert and not checking the status.
Incidentally, I like using the where is my plane now function on flight aware etc but often it doesn’t show up now. Has anyone else noticed this? My only thought is that the departing flight I’m looking at doesn’t have a guaranteed arriving plane?
Mick – Did yo mean the “Where is my plane now” on the UNITED app? Like you I loved that feature and it disappeared a few revisions ago. Flight Aware has the “Where Is My Plane” button when checking your flight status.
I am sorry for this. Getting a flight canceled at your home airport looks easy but as you said it is not easy to just go back home. Usually when we are leaving home for more than 1 week vacation we prepare the house for that so going back adds more complexity than going to a hotel. It sucks when the beginning of a trip is already off to a rocky start. Hope you can manage a trip back to Paris soon.
I’m sure he’ll manage.
Look into the flighty app. Its pretty awesome and uses live activities on iOS which is nice.
In my email today: AF 0378 Monday 27 February 2023 14:40 has been changed. We have rebooked you on AF0378 Tuesday 28 February 2023 15:40. They say “changed.” I see “cancelled — 24 hour delay. I did better than you. Mine isn’t tomorrow! But I guess that means no compensation.
Yes, as long as it is done more than 14 days before flight, no compensation. 🙁
Truly a First World Problem to stay in a hotel at LAX, with free food vouchers, rather than go home to a clean house and have to make the beds in the morning AND €2400 to boot. Truly a great trip before you even left. That Air France you got instead of Swiss is the gift that keeps on giving. I hope you enjoy the rest of your trip and arrive at a clean house. We have a cat so there’s usually shed fur EVERYWHERE since she misses us and sheds out of anxiety.
Does Europe actually require that they put you on another airline in this situation?
Since this was Air France, I imagine if there were still a flight operating for the day, you’d be able to get them to put you on KLM. I imagine you might be able to get them to put you on a JV partner like Virgin Atlantic or Delta (with a stop potentially). But would they actually put you on an airline in a competing alliance?
Or is this just because you think it would cost them less money to put you on Swiss or Lufthansa instead of paying you EC 261/2004 compensation?
If you take an alternative flight, do you still get EU 261 compensation?
Depends upon your arrival time at your original destination.
So let’s just say they flew me on Virgin Atlantic to London and then Air France to Paris. I would only get the 600EUR if I arrived into Paris more than six hours after my originally-scheduled arrival time.
Did something change about EU261 recently? I always recall it being 4 hours late, not 6 hours for 600 EUR compensation.
Did you ask for the compensation or was it automatically given to you?
It’s not in my pocket yet. We had to apply for it on Air France website. Given it’s a well-documented mechanical delay, AF has no grounds upon which to deny it.
Have you received the refund?
Not yet.
I checked my flight status all day on the eve of Christmas Eve. At 11pm, I made once last check on the United app and found to my dismay, my early morning flight from LAX-IAD was delayed by three hours and we would miss our IAD-MUC and MUC-VIE flights. I got on the phone with United and waited for an hour but no one picked up.
Luckily there was a video chat button on the website and I tried that. Was able to get an agent within 3 minutes, but she was not able to get me a ticket for a later in the day direct LAX-MUC flight on Lufthansa. She had to call her United customer service rep and we both waited for over an hour until the picked up. By the time the ticket was completed, it was already approaching 2am.
But then the saga continued because Lufthansa was not able select my seats because if an issue with the ticket. I had to call United again and not it was approaching 3am on the west coast and someone picked up right away and the issue was finally corrected.
Since this was a last minute flight on Lufthansa, there was only one aisle seat available, last row with the bathroom opening towards it. I talked my friend to choose middle seats upfront, thinking that was way better than seating in the last row. I had paid for upgrades on the United flight, $400 for a PE seat on the IAD-MUC and $120 for LAX-IAH and those were gone.
When I checked in, Lufthansa offered a PE upgrade for only $200 on the LAX-MUC leg which I grabbed right away. The food was excellent on this flight and I got to fly on a A350 for the first time. United sent a refund right away on the LAX-IAD flight, but I had to get my credit card to refund the IAD-MUC upgrade. Christmas miracles do happen.