I am an Assistant Professor in Tourism Marketing. I have flown Air France recently and had an experience that was against everything I teach my students in terms of customer service. I flew from Hong Kong to attend a conference in Spain; and I had connections in France in both arrival and return flights. On my return flight, from Madrid to Paris, my consumer rights were violated and I was insulted and humiliated grossly. When I arrived in Paris (Charles de Gaul Airport), there was only an hour and 5 minutes to my Hong Kong flight. I had to transfer to another terminal for the Hong Kong flight. In a panic, I rushed to the transfer bus, where I and many other international passengers were kept waiting with no explanation. We reminded the gate keepers about our flight time so that they can hurry about bringing a bus but the answer we received was: you just wait? The bus arrived, passengers rushed to it but the bus waited another five minutes so that it was jam-packed before it took off. By the time we arrived at the security check point, there were only 30 minutes to my flight. There were two long lines in front of the security check point because only two lines were open with personnel attending the scanners. The security check was quite thorough and therefore slow, so some passengers including me were anxious about missing their flights. Again, we reminded the security personnel that we might miss our flights; the answer we received was: not my problem? After I came out of the security scan, one female personnel wanted to search me although there was no signal from the scanner. And I was trying to hurry by saying that my flight is about to leave; her response was: not my fault? By this time, there were 10 minutes to my flight, I rushed to the Gate, but it was the wrong gate, the gate number on my boarding pass was wrong, so I rushed to the correct one. When I arrived to the right gate, there were five minutes to my flight. There were one male and four female (one of them Asian) gate agents. The Asian female agent approached to me, I showed her my passport and boarding pass, but she responded that it was finished, with a sympathizing manner. I could see that the gateway to the plane was still up and connected; so, I replied: I see the plane is still there and the gateway is up, why dont you just let me go?? The male agent approached to me right away and said: Madam it is not a train you know, we closed, you have to wait for the next flight, which is tonight at 11 oclock. That flight was 10 hours later. It did not make sense to me at all; I tried to explain to him that we had to wait for the bus and for the security check, but he did not listen, did not even look at me. The Asian agent was looking sorry; other female agents did not even hear the problem because they were counting boarding passes. Another passenger, an elderly Dutch gentleman, came in a hurry, the agent told him they were closed, by showing more empathy. Then, the male gate agent started talking with the other agents in French. I was really upset because they did not seem to care; so I said: The plane is still waiting, why cant we just go? But they did not even seem to hear me. Then, he turned to us and asked us to follow him so that he can re-issue a ticket for us. On the way there, I saw another passenger (Asian) rushing to the gate; I knew he was also on that flight because he was talking to people on the security check line about missing the flight to Hong Kong. But the female gate agents must have let him in because I have not seen him again for the rest of that day or on the next flight. When we were being taken to a re-ticketing agent, I kept expressing my disappointment. The Dutch gentleman was so shocked that he had to take a pill to calm himself down. We passed through the security check again and went to one of the re-ticketing agents; the gate agent started talking to a dark-skinned re-ticketing agent in French. The re-ticketing agent looked at me and smiled. They chatted in French for about two minutes; let alone showing understanding, they seemed to be having fun with the situation. The re-ticketing agent asked for my passport, when they saw my passport their attitude became even worse; they looked at each other, talked in French again, with a confirmed manner and the gate agent left. Then, the re-ticketing agent told me that my situation was different from the gentlemans situation because his flight was late but my flight was on time, and it was my fault that I missed the flight; he said it without checking anything on my flight. I could not believe what I was hearing. In fact, the Dutch gentleman was saying that he arrived an hour and half ago but still could not make it. Obviously, my being upset with the situation and expressing disappointment coupled with my national identity were good reasons for them to treat my case differently. I tried to tell him about the waiting, but he kept saying it is you madam, most people make it, so it is your fault, Air France is not responsible for your situation because Air France is never late. I was not arguing that Air France was late, but trying to tell him that we were kept waiting so they should show a little understanding but he did not even listen. He served the Dutch gentleman with a new ticket and a voucher for sandwich and drinks in an apologetic manner; and he gave me a new ticket with an attitude and turned his head without any further explanation. During this process, other customers were around as well (most probably French), they heard all conversations and kept looking at me. The Dutch gentleman and I waited ten hours that day, for the next flight at night. The lack of common sense, empathy, customer care, friendliness, courtesy, namely, those qualities necessary for sensible customer service on the part of the personnel of Charles de Gaul Airport as well as the personnel of Air France cost us several hours of waiting and physical and emotional distress. This is the most outrageous experience I have ever had. My rights were violated; I was discriminated and quite honestly abused, humiliated and insulted by the personnel of Air France. Therefore, I wrote a complain letter addressing to the CEO of Air France, Jean-Cyril Spinetta, and demanded apology from the responsible personnel as well as compensation. I faxed this letter to several offices of Air France, including its customer service office and headquarters; also e-mailed it to several related personnel. However, to this date, I did not receive any response. I am assuming that the CEO of a national flag carrier airline must have received the news from his personnel; otherwise, appropriate business, management and marketing would have been only joke terminologies for them. I study consumer behavior. I know for a fact that consumers usually do not complain because they feel that it would not matter even if they did because they see no difference, no corrective action or apology from the wrongdoer; so the wrongdoer gets away with it most of the time. However, I also know for a fact that successful companies do take corrective action because they care about their consumer based brand equity. Turning such negative experiences into positive ones to contribute to their brand equity is in their hands. They can turn a dissatisfied customer into a loyal one with a positive word-of-mouth. ALL needed is CARE. But I guess Air France is not one of them; THEY JUST DONT CARE!