Air France has finally repaid a passenger a €500 fee it charged after the airline accused him of skipping a leg of his journey, even though he provided photographic evidence, alongside other documentation to prove that he had been on the flight.
Xander Nabavi-Noori from Washington D.C. had booked tickets for him and his partner to travel to Europe last month, heading from New York to Amsterdam and then returning from Paris last week.
.@airfrance @KLM my partner was charged €500 fee at CDG this week for "not flying" the first leg of his multi-city ticket. The catch: he demonstrably DID fly it–sitting right next to me, with photos to prove it. Your agents refused to believe him and denied his refund claim.🧵
— Xander Nabavi-Noori (@xandernn) May 28, 2026
But when they got to the check-in counter at Paris Charles de Gaulle, the pair were told that Xander’s partner had not taken the outbound flight to Amsterdam, and this had triggered an ‘out of sequence’ clause.
In order to be allowed to return their flight to New York JFK, they would have to immediately stump up €500 (US $586), or Xander’s partner would be denied boarding.
Xander says that “under duress with the threat that he’d be stranded if he didn’t,” they paid the €500 fee even though they pulled up selfies from the outbound flight that showed quite clearly that he had been on the plane.
Ignoring the other obvious point that the pair were 5,850 km from home and that Xander’s partner hadn’t magically appeared in Paris, the agents dismissed their argument and told them to make a complaint after they got home.
That’s exactly what Xander did, submitting evidence that his partner’s phone had connected to a Dutch cellphone tower just two minutes after their plane had landed, along with photos from the plane and Amsterdam Schiphol Airport.
Xander even submitted the photo metadata, which showed the date, time, and GPS coordinates of where and when the photos were taken.
Within minutes of submitting the claim, however, Air France denied the refund request. Xander made a seperate claim to KLM, which had operated the outbound flight to Amsterdam, but this was also denied by the same agent within a space of minutes.
Xander suspects that his claims were being automatically denied by an AI agent, and without being able to escalate his issue to a human operator, he took to X to post about his frustrating experience.
The post quickly gained traction, and after the story was picked up by the popular and influential One Mile at a Time blog, someone at Air France realized that a customer relations disaster was brewing and decided to investigate further.
On Monday, Air France reached out to Xander and told him that the €500 was being refunded.
So, what exactly went so wrong that Air France was under the belief that Xander’s partner wasn’t on the outbound flight? It appears it comes down to a breakdown in various airline IT systems.
Xander had booked the tickets through Delta Air Lines as part of a codeshare agreement between the Air France-KLM Group. The outbound flight from New York JFK was ticketed through Delta but operated by KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, while the return flight was also ticketed through Delta but operated by Air France.
Update: @airfrance refunded the 500 charge today. Sincere thanks to everyone who liked, shared, and engaged with the story — it obviously made the difference. Still, I wish it didn't take this kind of attention to get a good customer service outcome from the outset. https://t.co/9C14idF9xw
— Xander Nabavi-Noori (@xandernn) June 1, 2026
Air France says there was a “rare anomaly” in the data exchange between the computer systems of these three airlines, specifically, Delta Air Lines, which handled check-in at New York JFK, and Air France and KLM.
In an apology email sent to Xander, the airline added: “That said, from a customer perspective, being asked to pay a substantial fee in order to board a confirmed return flight remains a very serious matter, regardless of the technical issue.”
In some ways, Xander and his partner were lucky that they were only asked to pay a €500 fee for the alleged ‘missed’ leg of their itinerary. Many airlines will cancel the rest of a ticket if you miss a leg of your itinerary and then sell your seat to someone else.
