In the past two days, two different people I brought to Air France at Charles de Gaulle airport have been bumped off their separate flights in spite of arriving well in advance of the temps limite for check-in. This happens all too often on Air France. 
One of the passengers got a later flight the same evening, but N, on a transatlantic flight, was bumped, along with twenty or so very grumpy people, to a flight the next day.
The Air France agent was in a very bad mood by the time N got to him, and when someone tried to horn in next to N and pound the counter, he just lost it. "I'm leaving! Je plaque mon poste!" he snapped, standing up and throwing down his papers. "I get paid nothing!and then to take all this abuse just for doing my job! You deserve for me to just walk off and leave you here! You can't pay me to do this!" The guy had to grovel and go back in line to get him to stay. N was a sympathetic ear and afterwards we found the agent had done N a big favor he didn't need to have done. Never be rude to the agent!
N got the standard compensation of 600 euros plus the onward reservations, and Air France would have paid for taxis into town, hotels and meals if necessary. Instead of the cash, N could also have chosen an 800-euro credit on Air France. I don't understand how they can make money bumping so many people so regularly. Meanwhile, if you fly transatlantic, you'd better get there three hours ahead of the flight.
This morning I brought N back to the airport and after check-in, he went to the passport line forty-five minutes before he was supposed to board. Luckily-- since he spent fifty minutes in line. 
It usually takes five or at most ten minutes. As he waited, the line got longer and longer, three times longer than when he joined it. I went to the front of the line outside the velvet ropes, and I could see that there was ONE agent to look at the passports of literally hundreds of anxious people. At the other end of the terminal, another single agent (there were five or six empty police booths) faced another restive line of hundreds of passengers. If they'd been French, they'd have been making a huge fuss (and something might have been done about it), but they were mostly foreigners, Americans and Asians, waiting trustingly, patiently, politely. Behind the police booth, three x-ray machines and a dozen security employees stood around with nothing to do. Moreover, the agent was doing something with a computer to every single passport. And almost every passenger who finally got to him complained: you could see them waving their arms around, and I saw his smiling lips through the glass say over and over again "Je n'y suis pour rien!" ["It's not my fault!"] The people at the end of the queue had a two-hour wait. In this photo, you see the middle of the line. To the right, it starts to snake around in Disneyland-style zigzags for at least forty-five minutes. On the left, the line goes out of sight toward the rear of the terminal.
N got through early enough to catch the plane, passed through the x-rays, and waved goodbye. As I walked away, a well-dressed French businessman with a camel-hair coat and an ascot (earlier I had seen him walking confidently toward the front of the line with his boarding pass and passport, only to have his face fall as he realized the extent of the problem) rushed out of the queue to grab a hapless airport employee with a walkie-talkie (which the French oddly call a talkie-walkie). "C'est un scandale!" he said. "You must tell them to hold the planes!"
"Je vous comprends, but we don't have the right, Monsieur," said the woman. "If the planes are late, it costs the companies a lot of money."
"All these people will miss their planes!" he said.
"They should have checked in earlier," she said. "It is not the responsibility of the airlines. It is the responsibility of the police."
"Ce n'est pas normal! On va appeler les médias!" [We're calling the media!]
"Vous avez raison, Monsieur! Ce n'est pas normal! Appelez-les! We are doing our best!" She made her escape.
The man went off with his lips pressed together, white with rage. I'm sure he missed his plane. The people at the front of the line, in trouble themselves, weren't having any of that "I'll miss my plane" line from latecomers that usually works. I've never seen anything like the lines today, and can only conclude that the police are doing a go-slow strike. Another escargot action! Or maybe what is sometimes called a grève du zèle ("strike of zeal," i.e. everything done punctiliously, which takes forever). Thank goodness we arrived early today.
The sky has been white for the past few days, that European sky that must make tropical hearts sink but that I love. Maybe because I grew up partly in Louisiana, and it still seems exotic to me, I love winter and the wintry welkin [an old word for sky; the German word for clouds is Wolke]. "Hark, how all the welkin rings! Glory to the king of kings!" It's Christmastime, my favorite time of year. Never mind about the P's and queues.
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