I chimed in on this thread yesterday to say my April 3rd, non-stop, Air France (codeshare booked with Delta) CDG/SEA return had been canceled. As of that writing, our outbound Air France SEA/CDG non-stop flight in March was OK. My call to Delta to rebook took some weird turns, so I thought this update may be helpful to someone else.
Before calling, I charged my phone, printed out the original confirmation and had researched all of my options for both a return flight and an alternative to the uncanceled SEA/CDG outbound, on the off chance that it was canceled as well (spoiler alert: it was).
As expected, there was a heavy call volume and I was on hold for two hours (I chose to stay on the line rather than accept a call back). To my surprise, once connected, the reservation rep did not see any cancellations at all, she declared our itinerary intact. She suggested that the email we received from Air France may have been a fake, a phishing attempt (yikes, I had clicked on the link in the email!). She put me on hold to check with her supervisor. When she came back, she let me know that when she refreshed her screen, our entire itinerary was now canceled in her system and we would need to rebook the whole thing. (OK, that’s kind of what I expected.) I was prepared with alternate flight numbers and seat choices and she spent about 20 minutes unsuccessfully attempting to rebook the flights. After a few more holds and supervisor consults, she said that she couldn’t rebook for me and my call was escalated to a different level/booking department. Deep breath.
Even though rep one and I had discussed the flights I wanted, the new rep did not have any of that information. I had kept good notes through the call so was able to very quickly bring rep two up to speed on what I wanted. This was not confirmed but, I believe that the hang up to rebooking may have been that the AF Premium Select fare class we had originally purchased was not available on the new flight, only Delta comfort was available. At first, rep one told me that I would be taking “a voluntary downgrade” and should not expect any refund for the cost difference. In the end I was delighted when the second rep told me that, after travel is completed, we can apply for a refund of the difference between the final fare class, Delta Comfort, and our original “lost” fare on the Premium Select.
After literally spending the morning on the phone, two hours on hold and one hour with two very patient and professional Delta reps, I came away with two acceptable alternative non-stop flights to Paris, no need to change our hotel dates or plans. Phew! Even though Delta was obviously in the dark about the Air France changes when I called, the reps were very conscientious, friendly and worked very hard to understand what was happening in real time.
