Air France, the Airline that Cares. Not.
Spiegel Online has not forgotten the victims of Flight 447.
They’re running an article, The Curse of Flight AF445
Victims’ Families Distraught at Air France’s Thoughtlessness on the latest faux pas of Air France.
Air France decided to be big about it, and send the victims surviving families tickets to the June 1 grand unveiling of the Paris memorial that honors the Flight 447 deceased. They sent the families tickets on the same flight, day, time and craft essentially, as the one that killed their loved ones. Although AF 447 has been replaced nominally by AF 445, the rest of the details remain the same.
You don’t have to be superstitious to be appalled by the move.
If the families want to attend the memorial opening…
(and you can just imagine their therapist telling them that attending the memorial would be good for them. Get them out into the world. Get them talking and interacting with other families who have shared the same type of loss.)
It’s bad enough that the family members have to get on a plane…
It’s bad enough that they have to get on the same type of plane…
It’s bad enough that the families in Brazil will have to traverse the same path as the fatal flight…
It’s bad enough that the flight is on the year anniversary of the crash…
But to compound all of the above is unconscionable.
Maybe Air France is planning to use the flight to downplay the family reaction. Can’t you just picture the future trial. Some mother or child is weeping on the stand, heartbroken over their loss and responding to some insensitive inquisition by the attorney. The Air France lawyer leaps up and waves around those free tickets, and uses them to say “Well judge, they weren’t so traumatized that they turned down free tickets.”
If any of those damaged families end up taking that flight (though I know for a fact the family association is even as I write this working at getting them on Boeings,) I guarantee they’re going to be complete basket cases by the time they safely get back to land.
IF they safely get back to land.
I’m just saying.
George, you observed things correctly. Not for the first time have Air France been trying to get the families of AF447 on an A330 on the same route. Late last year there was a multi-faith memorial in Brazil, and many of the families simply refused to travel on an AF330 from France to Brazil. AF then changed the aircraft to a B747.
This time, Air France are offering to pay for one night hotel cost the day before the anniversary, but are proposing to fly the families out of France on the evening of June 1 – ostensibly to save the cost of a second night in a hotel. The families that I am helping are continually astounded at the systemic insensitivity of Air France – even as the black boxes are still lost, together with many many loved ones.
Keep up your good work.
James