Air France Cancelled A Business Class Ticket, Said They Could Fix It — Then Demanded $1,800 More To Travel Anyway

A reader bought last minute Air France business class tickets. After confirming the tickets, Air France flagged additional fraud procedures for the purchase and said he had 24 hours to follow up to preserve the itinerary. He called within hours, but was told the ticket was cancelled, there was no option other than to purchase a new itinerary that would now be $1,800 more. He used the same card, had no problem, but was out $1,800 because of this post-purchase price increase.

This happened last April and has been trying to address it with Air France for a year. He’s out the money. Having reviewed the correspondence, Air France does not at all dispute his version of events. They just say there’s nothing they will do for him – they’re keeping the extra money.

The upshot is, I think, that I would not trust Air France with last minute business class ticket purchases, at least outside of Europe, North America and wealthier countries in Asia. Their fraud handling has been off the rails for more than a decade. It has seemed better lately, but when an alert does get triggered their procedures appear to remain terrible

Here’s what happened – and how they treat high fare business class customers:

• He purchased business class tickets for his boss on the U.S. Air France website to fly Lagos, Nigeria – Paris – Milan Linate on the outbound, returning to Abuja, Nigeria. He paid with his American Express Platinum card, and has done this several times before.

• Air France issued tickets and charged the card. Afterwards, Air France sent an email saying the ticket had been canceled, the charge would be reversed, and that if he wanted to keep the reservation he had to call within 24 hours.

• He called Air France within the 24-hour window and asked to keep the reservation, but the agent, after checking with a supervisor, said the only option was to buy a new ticket. He made the purchase for $7,341.50. The passenger traveled without further issue.

He did everything Air France asked and followed standard procedures to fix things. They wrote that his ticket could be preserved if he followed up within 24 hours, but they did not honor this. And he was out $1,800 because of it.

So he filed a complaint with Air France customer service, but that was rejected. He escalated it to Air France’s U.S. Deputy Legal Counsel and separately to the Senior Vice President of Global Sales for North America. He says he also messaged an Air France executive on LinkedIn who asked for the claim number. In all cases where he heard back, they simply stopped responding.

He filed complaints with both the French and Italian governments, the former because the first flight on Air France was to Paris, and the latter because the ticketed destination was Milan. They pointed fingers at each other, so he requested agency-to-agency handling under EU261 but did not receive a response. European Union passenger protections are strong on paper, but getting actual enforcement can be harder even than in the United States.

Air France acknowledges all of this, telling me,

The customer’s original ticket was cancelled prior to departure due to a transaction that was flagged by the bank as presenting a security risk. The customer was notified in advance via the email address provided in the booking.

As a result, the original ticket was voided, and a new booking would have been required in order to travel. Since the fare applied was the one in effect at the time of the new reservation, the ticket price was higher than the amount initially paid.

While these controls are in place to protect both our customers and the integrity of transactions, we understand how frustrating this situation must have been. We regret the disruption to the customer’s travel plans and hope to have the opportunity to restore their confidence in choosing to fly with us again.

The customer is left, probably, with no avenue other than suing Air France. And given that Air France isn’t even disputing any of the facts, it seems like he should. They issued a valid ticket, reneged on the ticket, and reneged on their commimtment to reinstate the ticket if he met their requirements.

They have fraud processes, and last minute business class ticket purchases out of Nigeria (and China and some other countries) raise greater fraud flags. But they accepted payment, issued tickets, and are responsible for fraud processes that are not themselves fraudulent extracting additional payments from customers who are stuck with no other option but to pay or not travel as-planned.

• While the purchase was made on the U.S. Air France website, U.S. post-purchase price increase prohibitions don’t apply. This is foreign air transportation outside of DOT’s remit.

• In reality, it’s refusal to honor a ticketed reservation and forced repurchase under duress. And EU261 does appear to apply – an EU airline flying to an EU destination, where (1) travel was dishonored, and (2) the Paris – Milan connection had to be taken nearly 3 hours later because the original connecting flight was no longer available – so the pasenger was delayed in reaching their destination.

  And EU261 suggests that if the airline does not offer the passenger the choice between reimbursement and rerouting when refusing to honor originally-ticketed travel, instead unilaterally reimbursing the original ticket, then passenger is entitled to have the airline cover the additional cost of the price increase for the new ticket (provided the new transport was comparable). That’s strong support for this passenger’s claim for $1,800.

• In addition, whether treating this as pre-emptive denied boarding or cancellation, there’s compensation that should be due. A passenger can have a denied boarding claim even when the airline tells the passenger in advance that boarding will be refused.

  Denied boarding does not apply when there are reasonable grounds such as health, safety, security, or inadequate travel documents. Air France might argue that their fraud processes, however reasonable, are ‘security’ but I cannot find any EU case backing this up – and the exceptions to denied baording compensation are all aimed at transportation security and passenger document problems, not screening for payment fraud.

  With the 2 hour 35 minute delay this passenger suffered on the outbound following denied boarding and re-routing of a long-haul flight (over 3,500 kilometers), the base compensatoin of €600 is reduced by 50% – for being less than 4 hours behind the original schedule.

• I’m less familiar with Nigeria’s passenger protection rules, but it appears to me that denied boarding actually requires the passenger presenting themselves for boarding, which wasn’t permitted here.

According to Air France itself, the ticket is a contract that provides for carriage, fares are based on pricing in force at the time of ticketing, and only changes in the itinerary or travel date can change the fare (except for post-booking increases in government taxes and obvious mistake fares, neither of which applies here).

The Contract of Carriage does not provide for forcing a passenger to repurchase tickets at the then-current price after complying with the airline’s fraud prevention instructions.

In terms of Air France’s obligations, I’m genuinely flummoxed that they appear to be 100% in the wrong here, do not dispute the facts, and are unwilling to do anything in this case. I assumed that when I reached out to them I’d either learn that they had uncovered facts not shared with me by the passenger, or they’d do the right thing. Instead, they’re just telling the customer to pound sand. And this is a repeat purchaser of last minute long haul business class tickets, so it isn’t the sort of handling you’d expect.

That’s why I think he’s left only with a lawsuit, and the Montreal Convention’s Article 19 makes the carrier liable for damage caused by delay unless it proves it took all reasonable measures or that such measures were impossible. The damage here is the $1,800 price increase.

Air France KLM used to cancel award tickets when customers would open new accounts and transfer in points and redeem those points right away. This went on for years but they seemingly got past this, as they very much wanted customers transferring in points and redeeeming them.

When readers have brought me problems like this, more often than not I’ve been able to help get them resolved, one way or another. American Express was even willing to make good the points to their customer, when Air France would do nothing on their end. Here I have not been successful.

This isn’t an issue of a mileage redemption, it’s paid high fare business class travel. But the same sort of anti-fraud procedures triggering a byzantine system with no hope for the customer seems to be at play.

And the lesson I take away from this is: Air France’s anti-fraud procedures remain so byzantine that they cannot be trusted for last minute ticket purchases – especially out of Africa, China, Southeast Asia and perhaps South America.