Austrian Airlines Reviews

I, once again, explained that we had to leave and he said then you leave without your luggage. Shuttle person kept calling saying they couldn’t wait much longer. Needless to say almost two hours later and we still didn’t have our luggage even though AirTags showed luggage was at airport! Worst experience, super stressful and frustrating.

We asked about a refund for the missed connection and were told to email customer service. After doing so, they denied our request, claiming we had “enough time” to make the connection — completely ignoring the fact that a customs trainee held us up by unpacking and testing every single item in our carry-ons. Because of that delay, we missed our flight and were forced to rent a car and drive four hours to our final destination at our own expense.

To make matters worse, Austrian Airlines then canceled our return flights entirely because we missed the final leg on the way there. We had to pay to reinstate those tickets, and we also lost the money we spent upgrading to extra-legroom seats. Our return flight ended up in cramped seats with zero legroom, despite having paid for the upgrade. And as if that wasn’t enough, when we finally arrived back in Texas, our brand new $120 suitcase was completely destroyed — split wide open and literally wrapped in rope by the airline to hold it together. I even have video proof of them wrapping it.

Throughout all of this, customer service was dismissive and offered absolutely no assistance, compensation, or even an apology. I strongly recommend avoiding Austrian Airlines. Their flight schedules are far too tight to realistically make connections — especially for families — and their customer service is completely unhelpful when their own operational failures cause problems. Save yourself the stress and choose another airline.

With 6 weeks before the ski trip we were told - oh you only get one bag and one carry on because of this Group Ticket (bottom of the barrel cost I am sure) so if you have a ski bag it is $250 each way. Typically you get 2 free bags flying overseas and if we had used a different airline at probably a little higher cost we would have gotten two free bags, the use of the airlines App, check in 24hrs and have a seat. Not sure if this will continue to be a nightmare or not but having flown many airlines and frequently to Europe this is very strange. I can't even have the App to use to see time changes etc. If you put in your Confirm. Code it says - this is a Group booking we can't help you. So there - first and last time to use Austrian Airlines. Fingers crossed it works out but good news is we are flying Lufthansa back and I love Lufthansa!

I found a spot about 10 rows behind my seat. Then another passenger came on, and opened up the baggage door, which was completely empty, and he was in the same row with us. Other passengers started using the space to put their rollers up there. Even the one across from us, that was closed was half empty. This was extremely disappointing. We paid for premium seats to get off the airplane quicker. We ended up being the last ones off the plane, as we could not get to our suitcases. We will never fly with Austrian Airlines again.

On our return trip they cancelled our flight and rebooked for 15 days later. We end up extending our house rental, car rental phone line, long distance charges over $850 (I spend over 10 hours on the phone trying to rebook our cancelled flight) and my children missed ten days of school, on our way back we again missed our flight from Vienna to to Frankfort due to the delays by Austrian Airlines from Amman to Vienna, we end losing 17 hours,

I wrote to the Austrian Airline to compensate me at least for the house rentals and car rentals and phone charges close to $1900, the sad part they refused to send any compensation and send me a letter asking me to consider them for my future flights, this is the worst company with the worst customer service. I am beyond frustrated and upset. I will do everything I can to get my lost money caused by their cancellation. By the way in Vienna there were at least 600 people who had missed their flights because of incompetency of the personal running this company.

Let me start at the beginning with booking our trip in April 2023. I booked through United, your partner airline. While booking our trip, you decided to raise the prices by $150.00 each. I then found out that the price we paid did not guarantee us specific seats but just a seat wherever you wanted to seat us. We are a party of 4 going to enjoy the Christmas markets which means enjoy our company together. Out of the kindness of your heart, you tell us we need to pay extra for the seats we want. Now it costs us another $50.00 each. What a scam. Several months later you changed airplanes to Vienna thus changing our seats. Another set of emails to straighten this mess up and get seats WE PAID EXTRA FOR.

The week before I checked all our bookings to make sure we had all the required documents. You did not have my wife’s and my passport information. How this happened is beyond me as I entered all this information at the time of booking and it is part of the United Airlines website that you supposedly share information with. We go on to your website which is as customer-friendly as your in-person contact to enter our passport information. That led to 2 hours of phone calls between your customer service and United passing us back and forth like we were soccer balls at the World Cup.

In the end, someone on your end said not to worry about it, you will be able to enter that information upon check-in. That’s two hours we cannot get back to find out this information after your app and the website kept insisting that the information needed to be entered. You need someone to redesign your website and app. Trying to find our boarding passes on the app was like trying to find a mini bratwurst on a 60 cm rollen.

Finally, our departure date arrives. We get to Newark airport 4 hours before flight time. We get the first rude person in a long line of them. She looked like she was doing us a favor being there. One of our party was asked to put their carry-on bag in the test container for size and weight. It was overweight. They made some adjustments and got it under the required weight. That wasn’t good enough and they were told that it would have to be checked. They made some more adjustments and went up to the counter. The woman there asked them why it was tagged for check-in. They advised her that the other woman said it needed to be checked. The counter walked them over to the same type of test container, put it in, and said that it would be fine to carry on. The counter agent looked at the other woman who shook her head no and that was the end of the discussion.

You should also check your communications with United because it is sorely lacking. When my wife and I got to the counter, we got our luggage checked in and the printed boarding passes. I looked at them and asked the gentleman at the counter where our TSA pre-check clearance was. He looked as though we were burdening him with a request to be upgraded to first class. I showed him the United booking information with our TSA number. We were met with our second rude representative as though he was doing us another favor by being there. The trip over to Vienna was mostly uneventful except for the overall rude attitude from some of the flight attendants. Again, lack of customer service training? Anyone?

Let’s get to our trip home. Again, we arrive 3 hours before departure time. I guess you have made it part of your airline policy to get rid of people to talk to when we have questions about self-check-in. Great move that must be to save money for customer service. Fortunately, as a seasoned traveler, I was familiar with this mess. Our next encounter with rudeness was the woman attending the self-bag check-in machines. There is someone who needs an attitude adjustment. She was either born rude or you are training them that way. And the overall theme again felt like I am here doing you a favor. Time to board the plane and the overall complete controlled chaos of boarding is in full swing. As our party of four gets to the area to check in I get separated from my wife by a rude traveler. That’s of course not your fault totally but maybe it’s time to be more forceful in boarding according to your zone.

I get to the person checking passports and boarding passes. I have my Android Wallet QR code up i.e., BOARDING PASS, because your airline has decided to go paperless which I hate. This has proven to me why and goes back to the lack of people to help you and why I get printed boarding passes. He looks at it, tries to do something with it, and then says he needs to print out a boarding pass. Really? He shuts down the lane to get a printed pass. Why? I would like to know. This now separates me from my wife and I am carrying her extra bag. God, forbid I try to help my wife in carrying her stuff. She later told me that they told her rudely and forcefully that she had to keep moving instead of waiting for me.

With the printed boarding pass in hand, I try to get through the automatic gate and I get pulled out of line for having an extra bag. Are you following this? I explained to the woman that I had to wait for a printed boarding pass and my wife had already proceeded on. I was sarcastically asked “So you want me to believe that your family has already passed through to let you on with the extra bag?” Seriously? This is how you treat customers. I said to the gate agent that my wife had already moved on. She asked the same question again. And I said to her yes. Sarcastically and rudely, she said that we shouldn’t get separated next time. This was all about customer service and the lack thereof. I am not going to say “I will never use your airline again” but I will make it a point not to use you if there are other alternatives.

Then 2 out of our 5 bags did not make it on a short, direct 1.5hr flight. It was impossible to contact the airline, they kept giving us different numbers to call, one of which was Lufthansa. Finally two days later we received an email that our delayed luggage arrived at the destination and I took a ferry boat and taxi to the airport only to find out one bag showed up. We had to repurchase clothing for the family member, then received a note that our lost luggage was sent back to our home airport in U.S.

Simply no sense of customer service. Ticketing agent interrogated us inquiring about our travel plans, flipping thru our passports, questioning authenticity. Gate agents were no help, general sense of confusion and chaos. Gate agent ran after us and plucked the spare ticket out of my hand to seat someone else. Very odd experience, resulting in cascading effect of ruined vacation.