Air France experience

cantabdad

New member
This forum is primarily about choosing the right seat and installing it correctly, but sometimes questions come up about non-US airlines and their carseat policies. Air France has sometimes been mentioned as a particular "offender" in terms of being difficult to work with. So I thought I would share our recent experience using a Roundabout 40, rear-facing, for a 10-month old child.

Going over, we got the seat installed and then were approached by a senior flight attendant who said that using the seat was "impossible," for unspecified reasons. A small group of flight attendants all gathered around and tut-tutted, and also pointed out that the person in front of my daughter wouldn't be able to recline. They wanted us to hold her and/or use a belly belt instead.

I told the senior FA that the seat was approved for air travel and showed her the Britax owner's manual. She then said that Air France still doesn't allow it. So I showed her a printout of the Air France policy from their website, which explicitly allows approved carseats (RF or FF).

We both kept our voices down and tried to be civil, but it was certainly a frank exchange of views. She took the documentation from me and disappeared, saying she'd check her operations manual. A few minutes later she returned and -- to her immense credit -- said that I was correct. I thanked her for taking the time to check, and that was the end of it.

Returning home westbound, the FA saw our seat installed and just smiled and noted that we were all set.

For anyone else traveling Air France, I guess the lesson learned is that while the airline's own policy is pretty good, not all FAs are trained on it, and you need to be prepared to hold your ground and show every piece of documentation. There is no chance that we would have been allowed to use the seat if we hadn't done so. My wife also suspects that our views would not have prevailed if I had used English rather than French for our discussion with the FA.

For what it's worth, they seemed to be particularly swayed by the diagram in the Britax manual that showed a RF aircraft installation as well as by the fact that my daughter had a paid seat.

The one grey area is whether a US-approved (rather than European) carseat meets Air France's requirements. Their online policy doesn't say one way or the other, and I was bracing myself for this, but it never came up.
 
ADS

Eclipsepearl

New member
Yeah!

I avoided flying Air France while my kids were in car seats for exactly this reason. They were always taken away from me except one time that I got the supervisor brought and they only let me because it was small (Sit-n-Stroll). I also flew them domestically and same deal.

Btw, French wasn't an issue. I live in France, now for 15 years. I spoke French before moving here and now am a French citizen. They didn't budge for me.

Bravo for holding your ground. They might have evolved in this time.

P.S. Those of you know I have a friend who flies for them. I tried to ask her their policies but so far hasn't gotten back to me. She's trying to talk me into voting for Sarko so I'll pounce on that for more car seat info when I get the chance :love:
 
I had a similar experience on Southwest a couple of years ago. My seat is approved for aircraft use, but because it is a Canadian seat, the sticker that shows aircraft approval is different than the one that the FA was trained to look for. The head FA tried to convince me that the seat needed to be gate checked even after we'd boarded. I calmly showed her the seat's manual (which stated that the seat is approved for aircraft use) and the FAA policy printout. She took both to the Captain and came back and said that we could use the seat.

Like you, I was disappointed that the FAs weren't all trained on the policies, but I was glad to see that the Captain agreed to let us use the seat.
 

Eclipsepearl

New member
They barely talked about this subject in training-and remember I've been through it with two different airlines.

To be honest, there is so much we had to learn in such a short time, they don't have the luxury of delving into the subject in detail, especially since lap babies are still allowed. The people who brought car seats on board were more informed on the subject already. It's enough just trying to keep passengers from strapping lap babies into their own seat belts!
 

cantabdad

New member
Thanks, EclipsePearl - I always appreciate your "inside" experience as a FA.

To clarify my earlier point about discussing this with the FA on our flight, I did not expect that speaking French would somehow get us special treatment or an exception to the rules -- but having a common vocabulary did seem to be helpful in just getting them to follow their own stated policy, which I had printed out and brought with me. Some of the terminology that is apparently used in European French ("homologué", "dos à la marche") is different from what I'd previously learned and it was useful to avoid another set of potential misunderstandings.

If you catch up with your friend who is still with AF I'd be curious to hear about the change in policies and whether there has been any associated training.
 

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