Wednesday, January 9, 2008

Air France: Are the bad customer experience stories really true?


The holiday season is almost over, thus the flock of ‘bushfallers’ and tourists who travel to Cameroon every year in record numbers is beginning to return to Asia, Europe, U.S.A or wherever else they call home. Every year around the same time, you hear the same horror stories from everyone about the horrible customer service of Air France (ADR) NYSE:AKH. Air France of course being the airline with the most flights to Cameroon by default and without actual passenger numbers is assumed to carry the bulk of these visitors. Although there are a number of other airlines that serve Cameroon, to include notables like SN Brussels, Virgin Atlantic, SwissAir and so on, Air France always stands out with bad service stories.

Wait a few minutes at the Douala international Airport (DLA) on any given day, and Air France passengers are by far the most dissatisfied group of travelers coming through. Leads me to ask, are their passengers this dissatisfied everywhere else or just in Cameroon, and what’s Air France doing about it? To be fair, I didn’t talk to Air France before writing this piece and maybe at a future date I will, but it makes me wonder how a business could have this much bad reputation among its passengers and stay in business for so long and be profitable at that. Of course there’s the element of lack of TRUE competition in Africa, French arrogance and so on.

Since 2008 is shaping up to be the year that Air passengers finally have rights in Europe and America, would those rights extend to Africa as well or would passengers be left on their own as they’ve been for the most part till now? Not too long ago, some of us were refusing to believe these so called ‘Air France stories.’ When people said their luggage had been delayed or lost we just thought it was because they had nothing for us and needed a lie to make it easier to understand. Because I’ve had a bad experience with Air France, I’m inclined to think the airline is bad and the stories are true. What’s been your experience with Air France or any other airline?

Hinsley Njila
Hinsley Njila is a correspondent of PrinceReport

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