Teresa has always been good at finding travel deals, and I don't just mean the cheapest seat on the airplane. She looks at the whole picture: connections, comfort, timing and what we're actually getting for the money. We don't normally fly business class, but for a long trip we'll pay more for the roomier economy-plus or premium-economy options. I don't need a private suite in the sky. I just prefer not to spend an overnight flight feeling like I'm sitting in the lap of the person ahead of me—or having that person recline into mine.
For this trip we flew from Tampa to JFK, then from JFK to Paris Charles de Gaulle. The flights got us there. Our checked luggage, however, had apparently made other plans. Almost as soon as we landed in Paris, we received a message saying our bags hadn't made the connection. We never did find out precisely why. The airline provided small travel kits with a toothbrush, toothpaste and some other basics, and we began our Paris visit wondering when our belongings would catch up.
I was luckier than I initially realized. I'd packed with compression bags, and somehow I'd switched which bags went in which suitcase. The missing suitcase held the jackets and cooler-weather clothes, while I still had shirts, underwear and pants. I could function. My toiletries and some over-the-counter medications were in the missing bag, though, and Teresa needed to pick up a few essentials in Paris. It wasn't the start we'd planned, but it didn't ruin the trip.
A couple of days later, around the time we were heading to Disneyland Paris, we made a detour back to Charles de Gaulle, collected the luggage and continued to Disney by train. We had our bags again. At the time, we figured that would be the airline story we'd tell when we got home. We were wrong.
There's a practical lesson here: when your checked luggage is delayed, you may be able to recover the reasonable cost of necessities you had to buy while it was unavailable. Think underwear, everyday clothing, toiletries and other essentials—not a free shopping spree. You need receipts and records of when you reported the problem and when your luggage was returned. What is reasonable depends on the circumstances, including how long you were without the bag and what you already had available. A missing bag for three days doesn't automatically entitle you to the maximum liability amount.
For most international air carriage, the Montreal Convention is the international treaty governing airline liability for delayed, lost or damaged baggage. Its baggage liability ceiling was increased to 1,519 Special Drawing Rights (SDR) per passenger effective December 28, 2024; the dollar equivalent changes with exchange rates. This is a limit on liability, not an automatic reimbursement or a per-day allowance. Air France's own baggage procedures and conditions of carriage matter as well, but they operate alongside applicable treaty and legal requirements. Separate credit-card benefits or travel insurance may provide additional coverage, subject to their terms and restrictions. If you ever find yourself in a similar situation, be sure to verify the claim deadlines, documentation requirements, and specific rules that apply to your trip. I'm not trying to provide a how-to guide here, especially since airline policies and regulations can change. I'm simply sharing what we experienced and what we learned along the way.
Also, we recommend that you keep a change of clothes, essential medications and whatever else you absolutely cannot do without in a carry-on whenever possible. My packing accident worked in my favor this time. I'd rather not depend on that kind of luck again, and your luck may vary.
Fast-forward to the end of the trip. We'd spent our last full day visiting Neuschwanstein Castle, Oberammergau and Linderhof Palace, then taken a taxi to a hotel near Munich Airport. We wanted to get some rest and make the trip home without rushing. There were dogs waiting for us, jobs to return to and, frankly, a strong desire to sleep in our own bed.
Teresa had tried checking us in online and kept getting an error that seemed to involve identification. She'd tried the previous evening, too. We'd flown to Europe on the same airline and provided our passport information, so it didn't make much sense. She called Air France from the hotel and was told that we had seats and would need to sort out the identification issue at the airport. Reassuring enough—or so we thought.
We flew the Munich-to-Paris leg, then went to the Air France counter in Paris to deal with our onward transatlantic flight. That's where the real problem surfaced. The agent explained that we didn't actually have assigned seats on the flight we expected to take. We were, she said, on standby. We had booked and paid for our travel, yet the only way onto that flight appeared to be if seats opened up. Otherwise, the next suitable option on Air France might be a day or even two later.
Now, I want to be precise about something when we publish this: an online check-in error, an unassigned seat and a legally qualifying case of involuntary denied boarding aren't necessarily the same thing. What we experienced was the agent telling us we were on standby and might not be accommodated on our booked flight. Whether that meets the legal definition for compensation is something we'll establish from the tickets, records and Air France's explanation—not just from how it felt at the counter.
Teresa handled most of the conversation. She's the one who made the booking and had the information in front of her, and I was doing my best to keep my mouth shut. When it became clear that waiting for the same Air France itinerary could mean spending another day or two in Paris, I finally asked whether they had a partner airline that could get us home that day. The agent checked and found an alternative on Delta, routing us through JFK instead of the originally expected connection through Atlanta.
There was a catch. The seats were in standard economy, not the roomier product we'd originally paid for. We weren't seated together, either. After more than thirty years of marriage, being separated for a flight wasn't the end of the world. But we'd paid for a particular level of comfort on a long flight, and the replacement wasn't equivalent. We accepted the Delta routing because we wanted to get home on Saturday rather than lose another day or two of our lives to an airline problem. We made clear to the agent that we understood this as an involuntary rerouting and downgrade. She acknowledged our concern, although we'll need the written records to establish exactly how Air France categorized it.
There was another complication. Teresa is vegetarian, and she'd selected a vegetarian meal for the original long-haul flight. When we reached the Delta gate, I asked whether that request had followed us to the replacement flight. The gate agent said special meals generally needed to be ordered well in advance—she mentioned 48 hours—and couldn't promise there would be one available for Teresa. There might be vegetarian options onboard, but there were no guarantees.
That may sound like a small thing if you eat whatever the airline serves. On a long transatlantic flight, it isn't small when you have a dietary restriction and were expecting the meal you'd ordered. I wasn't particularly concerned about where I sat. I was concerned that Teresa might spend the flight without anything appropriate to eat. Fortunately, one of the choices turned out to be something like a cheese stromboli, and she was able to eat. It worked out, but only after unnecessary uncertainty.
As of this writing, in October 2026, neither European Union passenger-rights regulations nor the published conditions of carriage for Air France and Delta appear to provide automatic additional financial compensation simply because a requested vegetarian, kosher, or other special meal wasn't provided. Both airlines offer special-meal accommodations, but their policies include advance-notice requirements and limitations, particularly when flights are changed at the last minute. Delta specifically notes that special meals may not be available following a last-minute rebooking and that requests made through another airline don't necessarily carry over. That doesn't make the experience any less frustrating, especially when you've made arrangements well in advance. In our case, it was another example of how the replacement flight didn't provide everything we'd originally booked and expected. It's certainly worth including in a complaint, but I wouldn't want to suggest that a missing special meal automatically entitles every passenger to additional compensation.
To be fair, Teresa didn't go hungry on this flight. She actually did receive a vegetarian meal, but we weren't counting on it. Before boarding, we'd made a point of stopping to buy chips and other snacks so she'd have something to eat if the airline couldn't accommodate her. Drinks weren't a concern; water, soft drinks, and coffee were all perfectly fine. The problem was having something substantial to eat during a long transatlantic flight. We'd learned years ago that even when you request a special meal well in advance, things don't always work out as planned. And there's something particularly disappointing about sitting on an airplane watching everyone around you eat while you're left wondering whether there's anything available for you.
In fact, on one of our earliest trips home from Europe, probably more than a decade ago, Teresa's requested vegetarian meal wasn't available. We were flying economy, and I seem to remember it might have been Lufthansa, although I wouldn't swear to that after all these years. One of the flight attendants noticed how disappointed she was. After finishing the regular meal service, she disappeared for a few minutes and returned with an unclaimed vegetarian meal from first class. It was an incredibly thoughtful gesture, and one we've remembered ever since. Obviously, you can't count on that kind of rescue every time something goes wrong, but it certainly left us with a good impression of that flight attendant. More importantly, it taught us a lesson we've followed ever since: if you have special dietary requirements, bring something you know you can eat, even when you've already arranged a meal with the airline.
My Delta seat was beside an older gentleman who appeared to be working through Russian-language puzzle books. We exchanged a hello and little else. His wife was sitting ahead of him, and he was considerate whenever the service cart came around. It was a fairly quiet crossing for me.
Teresa's seat was another matter. She ended up in the center section, away from the window she generally prefers. According to her, a woman nearby, who appeared heavily pregnant, spent quite a bit of the flight stretching and shifting around, sometimes even when the seatbelt sign was on. Teresa was considerably less comfortable than I was. Again, none of that is the other passenger's fault or an airline compensation category by itself. It was simply one more reason the trip home wasn't the flight we'd expected.
When we landed at JFK on September 26, the airplane rocked noticeably even after we were on the ground. I joked that it felt more like being on a ship in rough seas than sitting in an airplane at an airport. As it turned out, we had arrived in the middle of a powerful nor'easter that was battering the northeastern United States. The National Weather Service confirmed the storm, and reports from JFK recorded wind gusts exceeding 50 miles per hour that day. The storm brought heavy rain, coastal flooding, and widespread travel disruptions to the region. Fortunately, we made it safely to New York, although sitting in an airplane that was rocking back and forth while parked on the ground was certainly a memorable way to arrive back in the United States.
Then came the familiar international-arrival routine: immigration, collecting our luggage, customs, getting the bags ready for the domestic connection and going through security again. We have TSA PreCheck, and it was indicated on our tickets, but we ended up directed into a slow-moving line with what seemed to be only one screening lane operating. It was already busy when we joined it. By the time we looked back, it was packed.
We were only a couple of people away from the document-checking agent when an argument broke out nearby. From what we could hear, one traveler was trying to get ahead because his flight was leaving soon. Another traveler refused to let him pass, pointing out that everyone was waiting and plenty of people were running late. The argument escalated from raised voices and profanity to pushing, and the TSA agent called for help. Security arrived, and the line eventually moved again. It was not the welcoming-home experience I'd have chosen.
After that, we still had to get to our departure gate. Of course, the gate changed. We were near a junction between concourses and had a long walk ahead of us, with heavy backpacks and not nearly enough moving walkways for my taste. I don't remember the exact gate number, only that it felt a long way away at the end of an already very long day.
But we made it. We boarded the flight to Tampa and finally got home. After all those trains across France and Germany, it was the airplanes that managed to give us some of the most complicated travel logistics of the entire trip.
One lesson is that several overlapping sets of rules may matter, and they shouldn't be confused with one another. The Montreal Convention addresses liability for international baggage problems, among other matters. EU Regulation 261/2004 (EU261) addresses qualifying denied boarding, cancellations, delays and rerouting; Article 10 also has provisions for qualifying downgrades. The fact that Air France rerouted us onto Delta does not, by itself, answer whether compensation is owed. We need to verify our confirmed reservations, the reason for the standby status, what flights were actually involved, the cabin products purchased and provided, and our final arrival time. A premium seat product within economy is not automatically a separate legal class for Article 10 purposes.
Air France's conditions of carriage, Chase Travel's booking terms, the specific Chase card's benefits guide, and our separate travel-insurance policy may add other rights or claim processes. They do not all mean the same thing, and they generally shouldn't be treated as ways to collect twice for the same expense. We'll research those privately using the reservation paperwork and keep exact fares, card details and claim amounts out of this public article.
For other travelers, my practical advice is simple: keep the original booking confirmation and receipts; save screenshots of check-in errors; ask for written reasons if you are put on standby or rerouted; retain boarding passes for both original and replacement flights; document any cabin or seat-product change; and check special-meal arrangements as soon as an itinerary changes. If your baggage is delayed, report it promptly, save the file reference and keep receipts for necessities. Also, build more connection time into an itinerary that requires entering the United States, retrieving and rechecking bags, and clearing security again.
I don't regret the trip for a second. Paris, Disneyland, the Rhine, the German towns, Munich and Oktoberfest gave us memories we'll be talking about for years. But would I choose Air France again after the missing luggage and the flight-home ordeal? Let's just say Teresa has plenty of other airlines she can look at the next time she finds us a deal.
