This thread is amazing. I've flown Paris-DC at least ten times over the past three years. (Yes, my carbon footprint is stupid.) Airfrance was systematically the best experience I had. One other company fucked up my connections so bad that the eventually offloaded me to an AF flight. The first company also lost my luggage, and it was airfrance who led the search effort to find it and send it back to me...
As for EU companies being shit, I can only laugh. Customer service might be apparently "friendly" in the USA but fuck you if you expect actual compensation for delays or cancellations. There are just zero regulations, so they don't care. They will however smile and call you buddy while explaining to you that they won't do anything and you better not complain again or they'll charge you extra fees. Which I guess has been dubbed as "customer service excellence" elsewhere in this thread.
I’m glad your experience has been positive. It only takes one big fuckup to ruin a reputation.
In my case, my mother and sister were left stranded in CDG during Covid after being denied boarding to the US (EU travel ban). We were unfortunately not aware that the ban also applied to transits.
AF customer service in CDG kept redirecting them and provided absolutely zero assistance. They didn’t even help them book a return flight! In the end, I had to book them a hotel online for the night (in the airport) as well as a return flight to their origin. Obviously, the online complaint I filed with them went straight to the trash, so I was never compensated.
The AF agent at the departure point should have picked this up as it was most certainly the first thing they check for when your final destination is the US.
I have never had such an experience with any US airline. Even Spirit compensated me for delayed luggage without a fuss.
But the absolute worst airline I’ve ever dealt with is Royal Air Maroc. I would probably think twice before flying with them for free..
> You sound like you have an axe to grind. As an American I’ve never experienced this from any company.
Considering the terrible service we get from US air carriers, we certanly all do have "an axe to grind" with them.
I can agree with original poster that service level from United and Delta has been consistently worse than Swiss or Air France every single time (and that doesn't include the paranoid amplified security theater on US carriers).
I'm surprised the employees of American-run airlines aren't demanding a tip to board the plane...
In all seriousness though, I've traveled between the US, EU, and Japan in the last 5 years, and haven't had any problems, luckily. The one place where I see the US really sucks compared to the others, though, is security: going through TSA is not a very nice experience, and having to take your shoes off is pretty stupid. And having to leave the line or throw your (reusable) water bottle away if there's water in it is idiotic, and only the US does that AFAICT. Going through security anyplace else is a much better experience. This of course is not the airlines' fault.
The other big difference between these places/flights I saw is what kind of passengers you're sharing the plane with; American passengers are more annoying to be around, in general. But that's not the airlines' fault either.
I stopped flying AF when they started flying perfectly good albeit temperamental airplanes into the ocean floor. If I wanted to assume that level of risk I'll take my chances on some fartbox submarine. The rigor of their pilot training has since been raised into question.
IIRC, they've since expanded their training to "the basics of flying a plane without the autopilot holding your hand" and "Here's how to not stall at 35,000 ft, and here's how to recover if you do."
The latter part about high-altitude stall recovery was, IIRC, previously absent entirely.
MH had a truly awful year that year, but it's hard to blame them for MH370 and certainly not for MH17. Besides that, I think their track record is on the better side among global airlines.
Yeah, Malaysian is not a bad airline. Both of those losses were really bad luck that could have, and have, happened to any airline.
Not just saying that, I've flown with them twice over the last year and another booked in a few months. After SingAir and maybe Thai, I think they're among the best in the region.
LionAir and AirAsia, on the other hand, I wouldn't get on even if their tickets were free...
Based on my reading of the wikipedia article, it doesn't seem pilot under-training was a factor. The lawsuits seem to have centered on improper maintenance by air france. Is there any reason that makes you think that air france pilots' training is particularly worse than the industry average? Sure, pilot error was a contributing factor in the crash but that's the case for many crashes, so much so that if that were a reason to rule out airlines there wouldn't be much airlines you could fly with.
The second half of this paragraph is pretty damning summary of the performance of the stick-holder (I can't even call him a pilot).
> In a July 2011 article in Aviation Week, Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger was quoted as saying the crash was a "seminal accident" and suggested that pilots would be able to better handle upsets of this type if they had an indication of the wing's angle of attack (AoA).[264] By contrast, aviation author Captain Bill Palmer has expressed doubts that an AoA indicator would have saved AF447, writing: "as the PF [pilot flying] seemed to be ignoring the more fundamental indicators of pitch and attitude, along with numerous stall warnings, one could question what difference a rarely used AoA gauge would have made".[265]
I think there is a high percentage (probably a majority) of 15-hour, pre-solo student pilots who could have broken the stall of AF447 well above 30K feet.
> The pilot at the controls that night was Pierre-Cédric Bonin. Although he had clocked up many hours in an Airbus cockpit, his actual experience of manually flying a plane like the A330 was minimal. His role had primarily been to monitor the automatic system. The time he had spent manually flying would likely have been focused on take-off and landing. So, when the autopilot disengaged, because ice crystals had begun to form inside the air-speed sensors in the fuselage, he didn’t know what to do. The fly-by-wire system downgraded itself to a mode that gave Bonin less assistance. With the safety net gone, the plane was now liable to stall if conditions allowed, and Bonin inadvertently proceeded to create those conditions.
...
> The Air France 447 pilots ‘were hideously incompetent,’ says William Langewiesche, author of the Vanity Fair article
I'm struggling to understand how you came to this conclusion. I urge you to read the official report from the BEA (which is parroted in the Wikipedia article). The report clearly paints a very different picture, that of two highly credentialed imbeciles in the cockpit that bungled the response to a routine minor emergency and deviated from procedure (the captain was asleep with the younger copilot and a relief pilot at the controls). They subsequently forgot how to fly an airplane without automation (or never learned how), and made a series of unbelievable errors. The captain burst into the cockpit with just enough time to realize what had happened and curse them out in French (they were beyond the point of recovery and realized their fate) and the rest is history.
From the Wikipedia article:
On 17 April 2023, Airbus and Air France were both acquitted of manslaughter.
BA is just as bad. The legacy European flag carriers are now all basically Ryanair with a veneer of prestige but the same number of fucks given about customer service excellence.
As a regular traveller I have to laugh and disagree. Can’t deny the level of service for flag carriers has dropped but the level of service with Ryanair is an order of magnitude worse.
And as another regular traveller, I have to disagree with your disagreement. It feels like every other BA and Lufthansa flight I get on has issues while I travel to my hometown with RyanAir (due to necessity) frequently and have only had issues due to weather.
From what I've seen online and from acquaintances, RyanAir's quality varies depending on the route while traditional airlines have just in general become worse over time.
They're actually worse than Ryanair. They have an attitude problem.
Ryanair will happily sell you whatever privilege you desire. Priority boarding, seat selection, a nice sandwich.
With the legacy airlines you often need to build up points with them first. I much rather fly Ryanair because it's less hassle to get what I need.
The problems people have with it usually stem from wanting something but not wanting to pay for it. Bringing too much carryon. Trying to sit together as a family without paying for seat selection and then hassling other passengers on board to move. Stuff like that. Just pay the fee, it's still cheaper than the legacy airline would have been.
It's European airlines in general. It's what happens when the only airlines are flag carriers that don't have to worry about competition because their respective governments will keep them in business.
Because they have competent local competition. ANA is very evenly matched with JAL. Same with HKA and Cathay Pacific. Even Taiwan has China Airlines (flag) and EVA.
>> It's what happens when the only airlines are flag carriers that don't have to worry about competition because their respective governments will keep them in business.
Governments cannot provide aid beyond what a reasonable investor would do. The current European Commissioner for Competition (incumbent since 2014) has had particularly strong focus on that. Several flag carriers that got unreasonable subsidies went bankrupt after they were forced to pay back subsidies.
