I was due to fly with my son to Amsterdam on 6th Jan 2026. We were leaving from Birmingham for out first flight to Paris at 10:25 a.m. Out itinerary was BHX-CDG followed by CDG-AMS arriving mid afternoon. We were due to travel in European Business class with Air France. I’d booked tickets using Virgin Atlantic points – very good value and I have FB Gold Status so it would give him a taste of the same benefits on this flight.
It was the night before and I was just off to bed, I’d heard there was some bad weather so I wanted to check everything was OK as some flights were cancelled from AMS in the last week. Initially my flights looked fine but when I refreshed I found that the CDG-AMS leg was cancelled (others that day were still showing as live). I had a hotel booked (pre-payed) and Eurostar tickets for 7th to get us home (non-refundable). There were 4 options for flights leaving on 6th January. ALL of them required us to take an earlier leg to CDG leaving at 6 am. This meant I had to be at Birmingham Airport in about 4 hours time to check-in.
That shouldnt have been an issue BUT the first train from Rugby doesn’t get to Birmingham until around 6 a.m. I also had to drive to Northampton (1 hour round trip) to fetch Sam. Our only train option would leave Rugby at 12:59 so I told him I was on the way and rushed out of the door. When I arrived to pick him up he had the sense to cancel and not travel. On the way home I made the decision to travel alone.
Sam was right and this was actually a pretty stupid decision.
I made it home and off to the station with about 5 minutes to spare. The replacement flight I had secured was BHX-CDG-TLS-AMS now three legs and arriving in Amsterdam at 7 p.m. I wouldn’t have as much time in Amsterdam but I would be on my own anyway so I’d probably just crash in the hotel and have a lie in the next morning. Things didnt really go very well from the moment I got on the train.
I has booked 2 first class tickets for the short hop to Birmingham International. In the morning we would have had a cup of tea on the train and access to the First class lounge at BHI rail station, where we could have got coffee and a snack before we headed on the shuttle to the airport. At 12:59 there was no service on the train. So no cup of tea and the First class lounge closes at 8 p.m. So 2 first class tickets were worth only 1 “Premium” fare.
Arriving at BHI the airport shuttle was also closed so instead of a 2 minute shuttle ride to the airport, I had a 10 minute walk in the freezing cold (-4C) and in the dark. Security was predictably closed overnight and didn’t reopen until 3:30 a.m. So I had to spend 2 hours landside, eventually I found a comfortable place to sit so it wasnt as bad as it might have been – there are very few overnight landside facilities at BHX.
No-one was at the Air France check in by 3:40 so I couldnt request my flight be routed differently – there were far more sensible options at that point than the one I’d been forced to accept. I say forced to accept because I couldnt contact anyone in 45 minutes on the GOLD service line operated by AF/KLM and if I didn’t there seemed little chance of rescuing anything of the trip. So I headed through security while it was quiet
The Clubrooms Lounge at BHX was great as usual and even though it was 4 a.m. I did succumb to a couple of cocktails with my eggs benedict and felt much better for it.
The food offering on the first flight was dreadful and I am going to complain to AF about this. Instead of a breakfast which I would have been offered on my original flight I got this.
A cheese sandwich. Not a problem because I ate in the lounge and the coffee was good.
Arrival in CDG was uneventful.
So was after passport control I headed to the lounge in 2F. I had a breakfast and more coffee then went off to try to get my flight changed. There were other flights to AMS that day which were still scheduled and I hoped that by taking the 6 am flight I would have time to be rebooked into one of these. Predictably I had to wait a while butI was the second in the queue when someone from AF arrived back at the desk. I waited perhaps 30 minutes – patiently – before anyone even asked what I needed. In this time one possible flight had started boarding and had almost closed. There were still 2 possible flights CDG-AMS which were scheduled that day. I was told I had a flight booked and there wasn’t room on there (perhaps in Economy?). I reluctantly returned to the lounge and settled in for a wait of around 2 more hours. My onward flight to TLS seemed delayed. I got some lunch.
When I sat down I checked the board and saw my flight was flashing go to gate. I ate fast but by the time I got to the gate boarding was underway. So I was on flight 2 of 3 going roughly the opposite direction to Amsterdam. I was headed to Toulouse in the South of France. I hoped I’d make it and navigate the airport in time for my connecting flight. I’d been put in seat 1C which was fine as it had good legroom.
I couldnt see much of flying over the snowfields as I was aisle but at that point I just had another couple of glasses of champagne and sucked it up :).
On to Toulouse. It was pretty straightforward getting landside (I don’t recall there being any passport control – it was a domestic flight after all). I made my way to the check in to get a ticket for the next flight.
Aaaand….
Flight Cancelled!
I was now much much further from UK than either CDG or AMS in an airport with far fewer flights. I didnt know the airport or the city. I requested assistance with food and a hotel. The flight offered was to AMS at 5:55 the following morning 14 hours away, if I didn’t accept it NOW it might get booked and there were no other flights until the day after next. So I took the flight offered. Perhaps not the wisest choice.
They point blank refused to help with food of hotel vouchers and gave me instead an A4 sheet which just said pay for a hotel , I could spend up to 25€ on food and 50€ on travel to/from a hotel. I would then have to submit a claim AFTER my journey concluded. They would then asses whether I was due compensation. To say I was not impressed by Air France at this point would be a big understatement.
—-To be continued—-
I will add to this post as I can in the next few days. Its taken me 10 days to process what happened and trying to find proof of it all is infuriating. KLM and AF Websites seem to have expunged all of the delayed and cancelled flights from the record. So please forgive me if its a few more days.