The little worries and inconveniences are legion when you are lucky enough to be able to fly. Usually we go with it. Especially Stéphanie, a 41-year-old Franco-American, who has lived in New York since 2010 and has experienced many setbacks while traveling. Married to an American and mother of three children, she regularly returns to her country of origin for vacations. But this time, she snapped.
“Before, as I worked at the UN, I sometimes had to go back and forth twice a month for work… I had to take more than 2,000 planes in my life. But I had no never seen that.” “That”, it was a direct Air France Nice-New York flight, operated by Delta Airlines, which turned into a logistical nightmare for more than 200 people. Most were Americans returning home from a summer vacation on the French Riviera.
In question, the sudden cancellation of flight DL29, on Saturday July 29, which left a whole assembly of travelers on the floor, left to fend for themselves at Nice-Côte d’Azur airport, until the next morning. The Boeing 767-400 no longer had a pilot. And Delta, no network.
“I was with a friend and my three children, including an autistic son, for whom any change in routine is a disaster. The Delta Airlines representative kindly told us to manage until the next day, not even specifying what was the amount of the hotel refund, which we had to book ourselves…which is illegal.”
“I received several bells rings: 150 dollars per person, then 200, then 150 dollars for the whole family…”
Fortunately, Stéphanie speaks French and has a phone with 4G that can be used in the country. Which is not the case for the majority of tourists present on site, left to their own devices without wifi or a solution. “I had to help a lady find a hotel, with a limited wifi connection, since we were at the level of the baggage carousels. I witnessed an aggressive response to a 75-year-old American gentleman in a wheelchair rolling, who did not know where to go or what to do… The few agents disappeared little by little after the cancellation, we had no information…”
Accommodation normally provided by the airline
Anecdotes confirmed by Nicole Procida, 54, a New York tourist joined by Nice morning on the phone. “Yes, I saw at least two lonely people in wheelchairs, a group of high school students who set out to sleep on the airport floor because they must not even have known they were entitled to a room. hotel, people in tears…”
“It was chaos, I heard people say that we were treated like animals, which was not wrong”, adds the one who says she waited for her luggage for an hour, before having to go to Antibes, at her own expense, to reach a hotel room reserved by a friend.
“Of course, some were luckier than others: I overheard a businesswoman asking her assistant on the phone to book her a room.”
However, according to the law, “if your flight is delayed at departure by more than 2 hours (for a flight of 1,500 km), more than 3 hours (1,500 – 3,500 km) or more than 4 hours (more than 3,500 km ), the airline has the obligation to offer you support including meals and refreshments, two communications (email or telephone), or even transport and accommodation if the flight is postponed to the next day. A rule that can be found on all websites specializing in civil aviation. Unfortunately, this is not at all what happened in Nice that Saturday.
“A manager clearly told us ‘good luck, manage, I can’t do anything'”. Stéphanie also finds herself in Antibes with her three children, finding nothing available for less than 1,000 euros a night in Nice. “A Saturday, July 29, at the last moment, I let you imagine the prices”, she breathes. Without visibility on the amounts, she panics a tad. “JI may be Americanized, but the lack of clarity was incredible.”
However, if the flight was stamped Air France, it was indeed a flight operated by the American airline Delta Airlines. Its press services, in France and in the United States, did not respond to requests from Nice morning.
“Nothing we were told was correct”
“Indeed, it’s not even a story of ‘French disorganization'”, smiles Nicole, the American tourist, who does not want to do “French-bashing”. “I come here very often, the airport agents were nice, as were the Delta Airlines hostesses the next morning. But the company is clearly understaffed.” Remember that the direct Nice-New York flights, provided by United Airlines, La Compagnie and, therefore, Delta Airlines, are seasonal.
The reasons for the cancellation of the flight on Saturday July 29, according to the two women? “We were told that the staff had reached their quota of hours and that they could not work any more. The next day our pilot left on another flight.”
If the two women ended up returning to New York the next day, Stéphanie does not take off. She contacted Nice morning to begin with. Two days after our phone interview, she texted us outraged. “Delta Airlines had finally promised me $200 per passenger for the hotel, and to be able to spend ‘whatever we wanted’ on the meals. In all, I spent 750 dollars… But they will reimburse me 291.67 dollars” (message from the airline in support, editor’s note). Cis totally delusional!”
“Nothing that was told to us verbally on the spot to inform us was correct. The persons in charge had given their word. So I imagine that all the passengers of this flight from hell are in this situation”, she concludes, disgusted.
On the morning of Sunday July 30, when taking off from Nice-Côte d’Azur airport, the new pilot of Delta Airlines flight DL 29, finally departing, announced to all his passengers, already exasperated by the misadventures of the day before… that there wasn’t enough kerosene in the plane. “We had to wait on the tarmac for an hour, for the tank to be filled. People were furious.” When it doesn’t want…
2023-08-11 06:21:00
#planes #life #NiceNew #York #flight #turns #nightmare #testify
