Vol Olympic Airlines Paris/Beyrouth: 48H de trajet dans des conditions incroyablement pitoyables et désastreuses

Lors de mon dernier trajet Paris -> Beyrouth pour aller revoir ma famille, la compagnie Olympics Airlines a mis plus de 48H à nous faire arriver à destination et ce dans de piètres conditions !! Les 80 passagers ont été choqués.

Tout commencé le mercredi 1 juillet 2009 à l’aéroport Paris Charles de Gaulle.

Voici l’extrait de ma réservation – reçue par email :

Wednesday, July 1, 2009

Olympic Airlines – Flight 208 : Confirmed

Olympic Airlines Reservation Number: XXXXXX Confirmed

Depart:
Paris Charles de Gaulle Arpt Paris, Paris, FR (CDG) 07:30 PM
Terminal: 1
Baggage Allowance: 30K
Fare Basis Code : KOART

Arrive: Eleftherios Venizelos Arpt Athens, Athens, GR (ATH) 11:50 PM

Le récit de notre aventure…

J’ai écrit au service client Olympic Airlines un courrier dès mon arrivée à Beyrouth… Courrier que je leur ai envoyé par email :

Subject: complaint
letter Olympic Airlines Paris/Bierut

From: mandy <mandy@gmail.com>

Date:
Sat, Jul 11, 2009 at 1:33 PM

« Bierut, le 5 juillet 2009

To whom it may concern,
On behalf of all passengers registered on the flight indicated below, my self included, I ask for the payment of compensation if it is the entier reimbursement of our flight tickets due to denied boarding, long delays and mistreatment from Olympic Airlines staffs in Athens aeroport. »

- Electronic Ticket Record-

Our long and tiering journey started at Charles De Gaulle aeroport when they first announced an hour and a half delay followed by another hour and a half, they told us not to worry, that our stopover plain in Athens was already informed of our holdup, that the it would wait for us because we were almost 30 passengers heading to beirut.

We landed in Athens at 2.30AM; our plane had already been long gone. We (all 28 passengers) went to Olympic Airlines desck to complain: had they told us earlier, we would have stayed in Paris, spend the night at home, sleep in our own sheets and catch the next flight to Beirut. We will accept no excuse for this unshared information for we all know that this kind of decision is always made in advance and thus possible to share.
The two women who took us in charge then were rude, impatient and almost aggressive. They who only spoke English made no effort towards those amoung us who only spoke French; it’s also unecceptable that in an AEROPORT there is no french-speaking person easily reachable and responsible for doing the translations.
Those women were stubborn and unwelcoming: ‘’Sir, I don’t speak French! I repete, I don’t speak french Sir’’ and if the confused pessengers would try to add some words in English into his sentences, they would respond: ‘’I don’t understand what you are saying’’ and simply repete in English what they were previously saying about the next flight to catch.

Hense, our previous short and simple flight to Lebanon:

Turned into a long and what seemed to be an endless trip:

And that’s not all!!! There were two different but consecutive flights from Istamboul to Beirut, one was to reach its final destination at 21:55PM the other at 1:15AM the next day…most of us were registered on the late flight going from Istamboul whereas 4 or 5 were on the earlier flight. For those who were first in the queue this sounded unfair, one demanded explanations, and the only answer he got was: ‘’you don’t like, you stay’’!

Pretty logical answer I say…

The next thing Olympic planed to do is to get each one of us a hotel room to spend the night due to our new schedules. But apparently, most hotels were completely booked, so they had to split us into small groups and make reservations in 3or 4 different hotels…this task took more than an hour to be done with, it was already 3:30 AM and the bus, the ONLY means of transport avalable was to be at the aoroport to pick us up at 6:00AM!!!! We asked for taxis but that Olympic couldn’t take in charge.

Meanwhile we were all getting hungry and thirsty. So I asked an Olympic staff what could be done about that and that’s what the lovely woman replied: ‘’you buy a bottle of watter.’’ I replied back: ‘’what if I CAN’T buy one?’’, being even more caring she said: ‘’would you like me to give you fifty cents?’’!!!!!!!!!!!

I was shoked and outraged by the woman’s disrespect. And yet, when more people started coming to her for the same reason, the woman started giving ticket voutchers for an amout of 3.50 euros if I recall correctly…?!?!?

Here are some pictures of us, children, such as seniors or young or even prenant women, waiting for our bus …

Which wasn’t on time…?!

10 minutes later we were all seated in the bus heading to ONE SINGLE hotel!!!

What happened to the 1h spent dwelling allocating us in different hotels??? We were all so tired, it didn’t matter to us anymore, we needed sleep, and we all got in bed at around 7:30AM.

At 4:15PM the same day, the bus was parked in front of the hotel waiting to pick us up and drive us back to the aeroport. Our flight was scheduled for 7:30PM; therefor, those who got the latest flight from Istamboul to Beirut and were still upset had just the time to go to Turkish Airlines desck to see whether there were still free seats on the earlier flight…well, please do guess how many seats were still avalable????
80 seats!!!

Why weren’t they given to us less than 12h earlier? No law or security measure can argue in favor of this wicked and volontary act.
But with the time running out, we had to act fast, we asked to be all rebooked on the earlier flight, the Turkish Airlines staff told us that this maneuver can only be done over at the Olympic check-in desck; we then hurried up with our suitcases there checking in at the same time for both our flights (Athene-Istambul and Istambul-Beirut). They told us we had to pay for the extra weight because we were to take a different airline companie (Turkish Airlines) from Istambul to Beirut with a lower baggage allowance. WHAT AN AUDACITY! But finaly no one paid, those who hadn’t reach the weight limit compensated with those who had extra weight.

Then the strangest thing happened: all got both their bording passes, only 6 of us (myself included) got one (the one from Athens to Istambul) but were told not to worry for we were already registered on the earlier flight. But this wasn’t our only concern: first, our stop at Istambul was only a 45 minute-stop, knowing that the 6 of us had to queue up again at the check-in desck at Istamboul to get our bording passes and run afterwords towords the gate we knew we had more than 50% chances to miss our plane. Second, what about our lugages? For some, our luggages were only programmed to go from Athens to Istambul, so we had to queue up again at desck # 83 to get this fixed and have our suitcases follow us directly to Beirut…they just took the old tag and gave us new ones…but our suitcases that were already checked-in and gone driven by the treadmill were still taged with the short trip stopping at Istambul, this sounded suspicious, but once again we were requested not to worry…I don’t know…I can’t know…perhaps they would send some one to go fetch our suitcases barried somewhere, take off the old tag and replace it with the new one, or perhaps the tag really didn’t mean much, and that only what was computerized was to be taken into consideration…?

Thus, we all landed in Istambul later that night, there was a man waiting for us at the exit door, he escorted us to the check in desk and gave us the priority.we were happy to be for the very first time well taken care of and not treated with disrespect…but the nightmare was far from its end, one of us, was apparently not registered on this flight and had to catch the next plane, another young girl who was with her group of friends had to pay an extra 300 euros to be on this flight because there was no more free seat in the economic area.

Once seated in the Turkish plane, we had to wait an hour for the plane to take off due to some complications.

We landed in Beirut at almost midnight, surprisingly a part of us didn’t find their lugage, and I too could find mine, whereas others got theirs but was in a really pitiful state:

Those whose bag was missing decided to wait for the next plane coming from Istambul in an almost deserted aeroport…

… Hoping their luggage would be in the flight they were previously registered on, and thus the late filght from Istambul to Beirut…but no, they weren’t. We left Beirut’s aeroport at around 3:30AM and had to come back the next day at 2:00AM to get our forgotten bags.

In conclusion, no passenger shoul endure such a long and horrible trip, and in accordance with ‘’air passengers rights’’ we are all entitles to some kind of compensation, and I even dare ask for a full ticket
refund.

You should also take into consideration those who couldn’t or wouldn’t take their suitcase from the aeroport to the hotel and thus had to pay an extra 8 euros per bag to keep it in the baggage room:

 »

Je n’ai pas eu de réponse tout de suite… mais au bout de 4 jours le service client Olympics Airlines m’a répondu.

Cliquez ici pour lire la réponse du service client Olympics Airlines suite à notre vol Paris/Beyrouth de 48H dans des conditions désastreuses.

Et le site officiel Olympics airlines : www.olympicairlines.com