I despise Air France perhaps like few other companies. [1] With that said:
> Why? Because the burden of proof falls on the airline and they were presumably lying to me.
This is a non sequitur. Dispute resolution schemes like these (Ombudsman etc) are rightly set up so that the customer cannot under any circumstances simply be dismissed by the heft of the corporation. Going through any kind of dispute resolution process the corporation will often look at the cost of winning and decide that it's simply cheaper to give the complainant what they want.
It's the height of arrogance to come out of this thinking anything else except that Air France chose the cheapest option.
[1] Air France once delayed a flight my mother and my siblings were meant to be on by 8 hours and 56 minutes and then told my mother that if she did not board then she'd lose the money for all the tickets despite our plans being obviously destroyed. There was no compensation of any sort. We would only have been eligible for a refund if they had taken 9 hours delay. In tears, she got us on the plane.
> Why? Because the burden of proof falls on the airline and they were presumably lying to me.
This is a non sequitur. Dispute resolution schemes like these (Ombudsman etc) are rightly set up so that the customer cannot under any circumstances simply be dismissed by the heft of the corporation. Going through any kind of dispute resolution process the corporation will often look at the cost of winning and decide that it's simply cheaper to give the complainant what they want.
It's the height of arrogance to come out of this thinking anything else except that Air France chose the cheapest option.
[1] Air France once delayed a flight my mother and my siblings were meant to be on by 8 hours and 56 minutes and then told my mother that if she did not board then she'd lose the money for all the tickets despite our plans being obviously destroyed. There was no compensation of any sort. We would only have been eligible for a refund if they had taken 9 hours delay. In tears, she got us on the plane.