Avianca Reviews

I asked to talk to the supervisor and had to wait for 11 minutes for him to grab the phone to tell me that they can't answer the question without an ID because they just started a new program in which they pretty much are just creating a profile of their customers to get to know them better. I told him that I didn't want to be in their database and that what I was asking was just a simple question that I have actually found on-line while for him! I proceeded to ask him, "What if I didn't have a ticket yet? Would you answer the question?" Got no answer from him but just the same BS "without the ID we can't answer the question" I haven't even flown with them yet and I am already disappointed with their poor customer service!

On the second day of our stay my sister in law's bags arrived and no sign of my wife's so we decided to buy some clothes for my wife and hoped as the staff at the airport said buy some and keep the receipts. We continued with our vacation with constant contact to see where my wife's baggage was and told it's on its way and will meet up with us. Which later turned out to be a pack of lies from Avianca Airways. As the baggage never arrived for the 18 day trip so my wife had to borrow her sister's and my clothes as we decided that Avianca couldn't be trusted to even refund the clothes she had bought. When we eventually arrived back in London surprise surprise her bag had never left Great Britain to start with.

At this point more than a little annoyed with this we asked Avianca for an apology and to sort out the refund for my wife's clothes which she spent $200 including a bag to carry. This was last October and we have tried emailing customer services several times and every time no response. Without doubt the very worst airline on the planet (we have traveled with quite a few) ever. If you lose your luggage don't expect a sympathetic ear with Avianca. I don't want to even give them a star rating.

Then when the paramedic checked my wife they told us we had to wait two more hours to see if they can get insurance clearance to talk her to the hospital. The supervisor was rude and inconsiderate she was more about covering her own ** instead of helping my wife. We left the airport and I took my wife to a local doctor where she was treated. This airline has not even reached out to us to see how my wife is doing. Let's see if they even filed the incident report. Never again! Lost vacation and injured wife on our second honeymoon what a nightmare.

I had a valid visa for Guatemala in my passport granted directly by the consulate general of Providence, Rhode Island. But Juma did not even ask us if we had a valid visa to enter Guatemala. Once she realized her mistake, Juma continued to rudely explain that it was our fault to not mention that we had a valid visa. At that point, I was extremely panicked and just wanted her to continue processing our boarding passes and baggage as our boarding time was in about 20 minutes.

I said, “Please move on and continue checking us in.” Juma was not understanding at all and took offense with my language. I did not say anything inappropriate, but she was very unprofessional. Juma even said repeatedly “You don’t talk to me like that.” She didn’t even realize that I was a business class customer until the very end. I hope she can be taught how to appropriately talk to customers. The correct questions must be asked, assumptions can never be made, and customers that are unrightfully panicked are not being rude. I was rightfully frustrated and panicked at the thought that I could not go on my vacation, which I have spent a fortune on. Please forward my criticism to Juma and take the necessary corrective action to elevate her level of service. Thank you.

After three calls to Avianca I finally I was able to speak with Patricia, whom, like every other representative had verified my story, and offered to get a flight ticket "at no charge". She offered me two choices, a flight on Monday October 8 that had an overnight layover of over 12 in Guatemala or a perfect looking flight on Wednesday October 10. Two hours later... I picked the Monday October 8 flight because I need to get to Honduras as soon as possible. I asked for a hotel accommodation for the inconvenience that this has caused me and my family and because this was not my original intent of flight. Getting and sustaining a job in Central America is hard as it is and I needed to get there as soon as possible so that I don't lose my job, I was about burst into tears at this point. Avianca does not put the effort to accommodate their passengers.

Two hours later... At the airport Avianca claimed that the reason why they were not letting us board the plane was because there was weather issues in Honduras. There were no weather issues in the United States, there were no weather issues in El Salvador, and there were no weather issues in Guatemala. They should have allowed us to board the plane. Now, instead of being about 300 miles away from Honduras, I am still 3500 miles away from home. At this point Patricia transferred me to the "Supervisor" Beatrice ** to see if we would get some accommodations for me. All Beatrice did for two hours was blame me for being late and missing my flight. I was not late. It was excuse after excuse coming from Beatrice ** towards me.

30 minutes later...Eventually, they asked me to put a claim with customer service. I was transferred back to Patricia and she was working on submitting the claim and getting me a hotel and meal voucher when suddenly the call ended. Two hours later... I never got a call back from Patricia, which is very unprofessional. Therefore I was forced to called back and ended up speaking with Wendy **, whom, once again verified all my information and my entire story all over again. Wendy ** was a broken record, repeating the same line over and over again.

"I apologize for the inconvenience, unfortunately in this case, as I have mentioned before the accommodations requested are not available because it was a weather issue." - Wendy Hernandez. Any questions asked, she would respond with the same version of that line. I wasted over six hours of my time to be treated this badly. Unacceptable, no other airline has treated me this badly. Never again will I recommend Avianca, nor will I fly with them.

The worst part was when I showed up in Bogota 4.5 hrs before take-off to JFK and was informed that the plane was overbooked. Why wasn't I informed about this by email/phone before I showed up to the airport? Most other airlines that this happens for, you are informed in advance and at least compensated for the inconvenience. I bought a ticket for a flight, was confirmed by email, and I wanted that flight. I was also told that ALL passengers scheduled to be seated had checked in already. BS. There's no way everyone checked in already with 4.5 hrs before take-off.

Avianca did not offer any compensation and instead wanted me to take a flight with 2 layovers arriving much later to my final destination, while I specifically paid $300 more to have a direct flight back to JFK. The attendant never apologized, said there was nothing else he could do, and then proceeded to speak to another attendant about me. I asked for a manager, and he was not helpful either. They offered a flight for 3 pm the next day, but I had to be back much sooner. In all honesty, if they offered $600 in airline credit, I would have disliked it, but would have accepted it. I felt undervalued, disrespected, displeased. Terrible company standards.

They kept us waiting for two hours in case someone decided to postpone their flight and of course it didn't happen. We called INDICOPI, which is an association to protect travellers and they said that it would have taken 30 days to do anything?? Avianca offered to book the next available flight which was the day after but we had to be in Puerto Maldonado the same day, no other options, so we had to take a taxi (9 hours and $650!!!) to reach our destination on time. We asked for a refund and Avianca advised us to go to their headquarter in the city centre of Cusco. We took a taxi and once arrived in the main office they told us that it wasn't possible for us to ask for a refund there but that we should have forwarded the request through the website. I travelled all over the world and never had anything like this, I would definite fraud paying for something that you don't get.

And what was really frustrating was that they were considering it as normal, the operator was not even looking at our eyes when talking, nobody cared about the three of us and the other 5 passengers that were in the same situation. I would strongly advise not to travel with this company, it totally ruined our trip and costed us $650 extra to reach our destination. Avianca, be ashamed of yourself and close down!!!

After some annoying communications - we were asked to fill the same form several times, had to send in photos of the ruined suitcase several times, and half the emails we sent were rejected by the company's server - we finally got a compensation offer that let us choose between several options. We chose a refund for the new suitcase through our credit card. We got one last email from them, telling us the case number and promising they'll take care of it within 15 days - and that's it. They haven't sent any further message. Of course they did not refund anything. They've stopped answering emails. We live at the other end of the world, but we're considering suing them - customer service can't get any worse than that.

It was about 35 minutes to departure and we were told we could not board the flight because boarding begins 1 hour prior to. We asked why our names hadn't been called and the women stated she called our emergency contacts as that was the procedure. I am unsure why they wouldn't call the actual passenger, but as I looked out the window the plane was still there and one of the girls was closing the door as the other told us we had to rebook. We could not understand such a thing and as a frequent traveler of Jet Blue, American Airlines and Delta I was appalled by their attitudes and unwillingness to help us.

The three women stood there with the worst attitudes and one said, "Oh well you have to go upstairs and re-book, pick up your luggage and go upstairs to figure it out with them." It took everything in me not to curse them to the high heavens as there was no compassion, no empathy, nothing! As someone who works in customer service, my job is to ensure I do all I can especially when people are spending their hard earned money. My best friend began to cry because she was overly frustrated by this treatment!

As we went upstairs to rebook the women at the counter was closing up. We explained our issue and she stated "her shift was over the booth is closed, call customer service." I honestly could not believe this was the staff responsible for helping people when all anyone did was be rude and disrespectful. We sat on the floor and proceeded to call customer service. We had to call 4 separate times as we would keep being connected to people who stated they could not understand our accents.

We speak English from New York. There is no accent!!! When we finally got someone who understood us that rep advised us we would have to pay 400$, 200 per ticket to re-book and this is about when I lost it. I demanded to speak to a supervisor and was connected to Valentina who was like our savior. After 3 hours (no exaggeration) of being on the phone, not only did she over apologize for the disgusting treatment of the entire staff at JFK she got us re-booked at no additional cost, unfortunately for the next day as that was the only next flight available. We were super grateful for her understanding and support and I even left a compliment for her as she was true representation of customer service.

Not only did we lose money on our accommodation, cab rides to airport, car service for our landing we lost a night of our well deserved vacation. It is beyond me an airline would hire people who treat others in a disrespectful rude manner. I would caution those who are sucked in by the cheap flights to really consider paying a little more with the more popular airlines as they seem to genuinely care more from my experience. I was beyond frustrated that I paid hundreds of dollars to travel with a company like this and would encounter not one, not two, but 5 of the most disgusting customer service people ever.

They simply do not deserve to deal with the public and should consider another department within the company where they do not have to look people in the face as if their disgusted and then treat them so poorly. What sucks is after we got to our destination and dealt with the staff in San Salvador and Costa Rica they were amazing and very sweet but I could not shake the experience I had at JFK. Not to mention none of the other flights we took boarded an hour before departure and actually on our way back a couple had a hard time during security check and was able to board 20 minutes prior to us leaving. I truly hope this review helps others and I will actually be escalating this up to a supervisor or management there, as I feel some kind of acknowledgment is due to us.

Nearing the end of my travels, I received word that my grandmother was dying. I called Avianca to change my ticket to Dallas to be with family. They told me my only options would be business class, or to take flight paths lasting over 40 hours (both would cost me well over $1000). I opted to cancel my ticket for a $150 fee, with a promise that I would get a refund after I submitted my refund request online. Of course, the agent is unable to process anything related to the refund over the phone, can't even give me a confirmation number for the reservation cancellation...

After returning to Texas and in the middle of helping for funeral arrangements, I attempt to input my refund request on the website. I take the time to enter all of my details (they even ask you for a death certificate!! What an invasion of privacy...) and click submit, and of course the website does not respond. I try on 2 different computers/browsers, and on my iPhone - no option works.

I call Avianca customer service to ask if they can help me, of course not, they just very condescendingly repeat over and over again that I have to input the request online. I then get transferred to web support, who also cannot help me, but they give me the following email address cicallcenter@centrosolucionavianca.com. I am told to email and explain my situation and give my credit card number (because everyone loves emailing their credit card number...) and just cross my fingers that they will process the request. Not gonna hold my breath on getting my $300 back...DO NOT FLY AVIANCA. They will swindle you out of money with no remorse. Thieves.

Avianca was so belligerent they would not budge and conform with US Law even when contacted by an employee of the US DOT on my behalf! I will be disputing the fee on my credit card for this reservation and have already filed an official complaint with the US DOT. Luckily I have a very pissed off and baffled government employee on my side so I hope Avianca gets a big fine for this! If you use Avianca, you’re crazy and have very low expectations from your airline provider. Every other airline is 100% better at customer service.

After looking at the email three times to make sure I was reading it correctly, I called Avianca. I spent at least 10 hours (no exaggeration!) on hold for the next three days, trying to resolve this before I left for the holidays. On the third day, after hours on hold, I finally reached a representative who asked me to call again because she couldn’t hear me well. I refused. It took another 1.5 hours before she found another set of flights that worked for me. Sometime later, I got another email. They changed my flight again in the same way! Another series of phone calls and being on hold eventually got me another flight. Then it happened again! Eventually I made it to Roatan. The night before I was to fly back, I tried to check in online but couldn’t.

When I arrived in the airport I learned that they didn’t have my name. I showed my itinerary, at which point the representative told me my tickets were with United so I had to pay for my bag. She read to me the phone number of my supposed emergency contact, from an area code I didn’t recognize. It became clear that they had someone else under my itinerary’s reference number. The rep had to call the company to figure things out. Thirty minutes later, she told me they would send me on another flight to Chicago via Washington DC that day.

I told her I was meeting people in San Salvador and needed to be there that night. Another 30 minutes on the phone. I’d have to stay in San Salvador for two nights in that case. I made the flight at the last minute and ended up in San Salvador for an additional night, where I couldn’t get any money out of the ATM’s because I was supposed to be back in the states. I filed a complaint and asked for reimbursement. The automatic response promised I’d hear back within 7-10 days. It’s been over two weeks and, of course, I haven’t heard a word from them.

AVIANCA sent me to El Salvador where I was expected to take another flight to Washington. But when we were ready to depart from Bogota, and doors were closed, we receive an announce from the Captain, who said that AVIANCA realized that one of the flight attendants couldn't flight, because his schedule was completed. Of course we have to wait for one replacement another hour and a half. I lost again my connecting flight in San Salvador to Washington.

After three hours waiting in the airport of El Salvador. They took me in a bus to a hotel in the City of San Salvador, located one hour from the airport. I was put in hotel room, without any assistance, without any company. It was a nightmare that night in that hotel because I was unable to move by myself. The following day I was taken again in a bus to the airport at 5 in the morning and finally I reached my destination 33 hours after my departure instead of 6 hours later. According to representatives of Avianca oversold tickets without any consideration with the passengers like me that have special needs and have bought the airfare with much anticipation.

It is now February 2018. Have called Avianca countless times and every time they come up with more utter nonsense to not issue my refund. Their policy changed. Now you have to wait 30 business days. You have to wait till the first of the next month. Why? Because your request cannot be processed until then. Then you have to wait until you can talk to a (non-existent) supervisor who may be able to expedite your refund request. Expedite? I requested this refund four months ago. There’s nothing to expedite, I would like to know why it has not been processed. I always have to call back next day, next morning, next Monday, mañana, later. Then you have to wait until the next year as policies are changing again and nobody knows what the new policies are.

Then I must wait until February. Why? Because your request cannot be processed. Well, why has it still not been processed? Why hasn’t it begun to be processed after more than four months? This airline relies on peoples’ frustration to avoid giving people their rightful refunds - they keep all these funds in some account earning interest for Avianca while we lesser humans kill ourselves paying interest to our credit cards. My utmost fury is at all employees and their customer disservice, who just cannot and will not do anything, who put far more effort into denying you any semblance of service instead of doing anything at all; who leave you on hold for hours at a time, who overcharge you for everything, who do squat, who leave paying customers hopelessly and helplessly hanging and ignore them all.

At all employees in general as they sift through my personal belongings, dump my stuff on tables and drop it on floors, toss and destroy my luggage, steal my lighters and my tiny stylus flashlights, grope between my legs, take so long to do anything at all you miss your flight and then have the gall to charge you $300 for changing your flight. They really do need to crash, burn, and rot. Like others I have flown Avianca out of necessity but at this point I will take a boat before I ever use this airline again. A boat probably wouldn’t take as long and would be far more relaxing.

Updated on 04/10/2018: Left a review here over two months ago regarding Avianca refusing to issue my refund for a flight cancelled in September 2017, had not realized I specifically need to demand a refund - numerous times. When I called in October 2017 to request my refund for a flight canceled a month before, I was instructed to process my refund request online. Many phone calls and much frustration later, in February 2018, my refund was finally authorized. I was told I had to wait six weeks to see my refund. Why? This company had my money for four months after my refund request and still forces me to jump through hoops to get my money back. It is now well into April 2018. I still have not received my refund.

Began calling yet again over a week ago and rep claimed he did not understand why my refund had not yet been issued and that he would file a report to expedite the issue. Here we go again with expediting - there is nothing that needs to be expedited but everything that should have been done months ago. It’s been more than a week. Two days after my phone call the website shows that my refund has been accepted. But IT STILL HAS NOT BEEN ISSUED. Flight service is fine and airline staff has been acceptable.

Airport staff is horrendous, gropes your body without advising you, sifts through your dirty underwear with disgusting thoroughness going as far as holding them up to the light; steals lighters, tablet styluses, nail scissors, empty aluminum water bottles with regularity despite all these items being carefully selected to comply with international safety regulations, and my carrying printouts that the items I am carrying are in fact permitted. Nothing should ever be left to any employees’ discretion, this invariably leads to tremendous abuses of perceived power.

After being on hold for close to a half hour I was just informed again that my refund should be processed within 10 business days (just as it was five business days ago) and that the rep would expedite my refund. I am so tired and fed up with this crap. Avianca has owed me more than US $700 for more than six months. That’s a lot of money. They are in no hurry to pay it back for services not rendered. I will make efforts to never, ever fly with this airline again.

This was the worst experience I’ve ever had when traveling. My wife travel on a suppose non-stop flight and she had to travel to San Pedro Zula, Honduras and change planes. Terrible, terrible!! This is not fair at all and someone should do something about it. They steal from people and do not care. I’m considering not using this airline. Airline TACA had way better service. TACA would hold passengers on hotels and transport them in the next couple of days. It's not the customer fault that the flights gets cancelled. We all pay a lot of money. Hope there were other options to San Salvador with better prices.

I asked for compensation via voucher or at least an upgrade and they just smiled with a "No we can't." Said they can cancel and return my money. NOW WHY WOULD I WANT THAT I'M STUCK WITH NO OTHER FLIGHTS OR PAY 3X THE AMOUNT WITH ANOTHER AIRLINE LAST MIN. Neverrr again will I fly Avianca. Stay clear. They don't care how they screw you over.

Ever since I have been battling with your baggage complaint department who refuses to communicate my complaint about their rudeness to the supervisor. I honestly don't understand why being educated to your customers should be so hard or why you think you can get away with bad service and rudeness. I am overall tired of the constant issues I have had with the Airline, every flight I've had with them have been filled of issues: Mexico - Managua: cancelled flight. Managua-Washington: cancelled flight. Managua-Houston: cancelled flight. Brazil-Managua: delayed flight. Just to mention a few. All I've ever asked is honesty, information and kind service. But it seems my expectations are too high.

I gave them the new itinerary # and they claimed they couldn't find it. Then 15 minutes later they found it but said it had to sync before they could check me in. By this time it had taken 3 hours to try and resolve this. I went back up and they told me once again that I needed to pay. I left the airport and called Travelocity to help me get a refund which they did but Avianca charged me $175 cancel fee. The attitude of Marta and all the rest of the cs reps in Miami was terrible. Travelocity told me they could have helped me but it was clear for some reason they didn't want to. The problem is that this company is from Latin America where customer service is non-existent and customers are treated like crap. I know because I lived in Costa Rica for 10 years and saw this every day. This company should be ashamed of their horrible customer service that doesn't belong in a first world country.

First they told me they could not book that route without going through LA, and at this point I'd prefer not to enter Trumpland for any reason; after insisting that I was looking at the route online, he finally admitted he could book the same routing, YVR-MEX-SAL-RTB, and that's when he hit me with a fare well over $2000. This is clearly an intentional scam, to avoid letting customers use credits and make higher profit. This is an unscrupulous airline, I would not ever fly with them now, and I recommend that nobody else does, either. I am going to report them to Transport Canada, and I may file suit in small claims.

When I arrived in El Salvador, I decided to find the Avianca lounge to ask them about this. They then directed me to a terminal where someone said there was a shuttle coming to take the entire group to a hotel. We waited approximately 40-60 minutes for this, plus the time it took to all go through customs. Although there were hotels down the street from the airport, the airline arranged a hotel that was 40 minutes away from the airport. We arrived there at 10 pm and were told the shuttle would pick us up at 2:45 am (aka barely slept at all, considering how many people had to individually check in and still have dinner). For this hassle, all we received was a $50 compensation document that could only be used towards specific items (potential upgrade, baggage fees, etc.) for the next year. I asked if I could upgrade my return flight, and they said to wait until the day of my flight to arrange this.

Fast forward to my return flight. The computers were down at Managua, so people were stuck waiting to check in less than an hour before the flight, even though we're lined up 2-3 hours before boarding. Turns out they were hand writing each person's boarding pass! I asked for a second time about the upgrade, but they said to wait until El Salvador to get our connecting boarding passes because they had no access to their system (would this ever happen to a Canadian or American airline?? Probably not!).

We arrived in El Salvador, and figured to ask for our boarding passes at the gate desk, but turned out this airport is set up so that we still had to go through security again at our specific gate. We got stopped because we obviously did not have boarding passes yet, so all we had to show them were our handwritten passes for our originating flight. We handed them to a lady while going through security and had to wait a while. So much for communication... Why didn't Managua call anyone about this?? After quite some time, the lady returned, handing my friend her ticket (free upgrade to business class) and said that they had no seats left on the plane for me, and I might have to wait until tomorrow.

FIRST of all, after being "wronged" on my original flight, you would think they'd prioritize me in a way that would make up for the inconvenience (other than a useless $50 voucher)... especially considering that I had to ask multiple times for an upgrade that never happened. NOPE. What should have rightfully been my option to upgrade went towards someone else with no previous negative experience, and I was completely bumped off my flight... and not even told about it until mid-transit! Again, completely nerve-wracking as I was no longer part of a group, but singled out this time in the middle of a country I have never actually been to and can't speak the language.

The only reason why I was allowed onto the plane in the last 20 minutes of boarding was because someone did not show, and got shafted to the very back row of the plane, with barely an apology and nothing to make up for the drama. Had I been forced to wait for the next flight, I severely doubt they would have accommodated me enough to make up for their SECOND screw-up within a single trip. I will NEVER EVER fly with Avianca again, even if it means not visiting central/south America in the future.

After an interminable wait to get through security (only 2 metal detectors for the entire airport) and then customs, with NO calls for passengers that were in danger of missing the flight), we ran to the gate, arriving 8 minutes before takeoff. We were rather rudely told the doors had already been locked and they would not unlock them, that we should have arrived much earlier to be at the gate 15 minutes before takeoff.

2 other passengers arrived as well fluent in Spanish and English and they confirmed Avianca had made zero announcements for passengers. All our luggage had already been pulled. So they led us back to get our luggage, walking at a snail's pace and then to re-booking. No more flights from Costa Rica to Belize that day or until midday the following day. But we could fly to Costa Rica, then to El Salvador, spend the night in El Salvador (where we had no hotel booked) and then fly to Belize the next morning. We had to complain to the manager to get our flights for free. This took 1.5 days out of our vacation, added greatly to our emotional stress given the birth mom reunion with our son... all because of the re-ticketing.

What irks me most is the attitude of the Avianca folks at the gate that took great relish in denying our request to open the plane door. Why our ticketing was "wrong" to begin with and made us lose the 20 minutes and more (because the lines grew) was never explained. Avianca representatives at the gate did not make any attempt to understand our position or admit that they caused the delay that put us at the gate 7 minutes late. I have been on many planes where the door has been opened to accommodate last minute passengers. I am left with a very bitter taste in my mouth.

The hotel in El Salvador was at our expense. The auto rental in Belize was gone as we arrived a day and a half late. Our new rental took hours to arrive and at a upgrade on us of course. Do not fly this airline. Looking over these complaints, ours now included, should be enough to convince anyone to make other arrangements, fly other airlines. What should have been a time of reflection on a great occasion was turned into a nightmare thanks to Avianca airlines.

When I finally called back in to use my flight credit, they said that the flight prices for CHANGED tickets are double the flight prices for NEW tickets, so the prices we saw published online were just a fraction of what they'd actually charge us. The most affordable flight I could find online would still cost us an additional $400 to book, which would be a whopping $1,100 a person for flights listed online at $421. I was on the phone for 45 minutes to find this out, and when I tried to ask if the flight prices were abnormally high they hung up on me. Then I called back and spoke to another person, who again hung up on me when I asked to speak to a manager. At this point I think it's $1700 down the drain. We never would have canceled the first flight if we'd known how much trouble this would be. So much for a honeymoon...

My trip I've been dreaming my whole life has turned into a nightmare. How is this company allowed to be in business? I've never heard such absurdities in over 25 years of travel. Oh and I just had surgery and was supposed to have a stress-free relaxing vacation to help recover and get some energy back. I have had multiple anxiety attacks and upset stomach through this ordeal. Can't put a price on my mental or physical health they have affected. Not like they care about that either. Crooks!

I have worked for 4 airlines - AA, AF, LAN & Iberia for doing ramp, operations, security, etc. And I couldn't believe they couldn't just take the description and details of my flight plus my contact information to get the claim going. I had to explain them exactly what they need it for me and at the end they didn't even want to give me a copy of the claim they took for me to have in my records! The agents name were: Jazmin ** & Martha **. What a horrible customer service & lack of experience - I definitely would have handle this situation better - I travel 3 times a year to El Salvador & send tickets to my family members. I take Avianca per the convenience but you just lost my business - Please have a manager reach me.

My son went to book another flight. He was booked at 9 am same day flight, waited 2 hours just to be told that he will NOT FLY, WHY??? He was not given another chance to fly another day, WHY??? Is that how Avianca treats its customers??? He went home, booked another flight paid AGAIN $1000, lost his money. SHAME AVIANCA ,SHAME!!! Don't fly Avianca guys, they SUCK!!!

I did complain that they could inform me in advance, call to my cell or send me a message informing me the situation and at least I could sleep a little more - I left home at 3:00am - and their lovely answer is that she (the counter person) did not now that they changed my flight until I arrived to the counter. In other words, even if they have the passenger info, they would not inform them and let them come at 4:00am for a 9:20 flight.

Last but not least, I commented that I'm paying extra for a reasonable flight and ask how they will compensate me...and the answer was the most terrible of all, we are trying to "help you" and that in reality the flight is one hour later only. Consequently there is no compensation, but if I want I can contact the airline and give my complaint. I flight very frequently and in various airlines, but the Avianca attitude is unacceptable.

There was a line of 15 people ahead of me - it seemed we had all been locked out of boarding and were not going to be able to make our flights. First off, with the Olympics being that week, you would think the airline would try everything it could to get us on the original flight. There was only one lady working the ticket counter and was unable to help me or anyone else reschedule flights - everything was booked! Next flight available might not be until 4 days later. Since there was so much confusion and a line growing for help, I needed to take into my own hands. $3000 later, LATAM Airlines found me a seat on a flight to Rio later that day. They were SO helpful and even tried to upgrade me, got me an aisle seat, and gave me a VIP voucher. Thanks LATAM.

Anyway, nightmare over, so I thought. The next day after I missed my flight, on August 5th at 3:35 PM, Avianca sent me an email stating that I could upgrade my return flight to business class by bidding for it. I thought that would be nice, so my friend and I (she was on the flight I missed) sent our CC info to bid for an upgrade. The night before our flight home, my friend tells me she got approved for the upgrade! I checked my email but did not get told this. Now I was worried, so I called Avianca to see what happened as we both bid the same amount at the same time.

They tell me that since I missed my departure flight on the 4th, they cancelled my return flight. ARE YOU KIDDING? Then why on the 5th, over 24 hours after I missed my original flight, would they send me an email asking to upgrade the return flight?! I did not get any emails about the fact that I missed my flight and that they would cancel my return flight. At this point, I had no reason to think the return flight was cancelled.

The guy on the phone was horrible, told me that if I wanted to get that flight back, it was a "change of itinerary" so I would have to pay $200 change fee plus the difference...$2300 to get back on the flight I had already paid for. Since I was in a stressful situation that again needed me to get home ASAP, I called JetBlue and they hooked me up with a return flight for $600. So all in all, I paid $3600 with other airlines and never set foot on an Avianca flight which I paid for. I understand I missed that first flight, but between the confusion and chaos at Avianca's ticket counter and their HORRIBLE customer service, they were unable to even assist me or help me a little bit.

I have a complaint in right now and was told they would get back to me via email in a few days. I hope that somehow someone understands that this is an insane business practice. If the right people contact me and fix this for me, I will gladly remove this review but until then, I am appalled by how they did not even handle this at all.

So we got to Honduras at 10:30 PM and we supposed the arrive at 3:30 PM. This delay destroy us emotionally, and they never apologize to us at all. Last week my wife traveled to Honduras and her flight was delay more than one hour in El Salvador for the same reason the plane was broken and they were waiting for the parts. I think this is just an excuse they use to wait for more passenger to fill in the plane. On the way back my wife paid $172.00 for one extra bag and again got delayed in El Salvador. I called the call center in El Salvador. They provided me a number to call in San Francisco to pick the bag. They never pick up the phone neither respond my message back. So I went to the airport and waited for the midnight flight to arrive and waited more than two hour to get the bag.

Other thing that bother me is that after you have passed the Immigration checkpoint Avianca/Taca have in El Salvador before you walk in to the waiting area they have some people checking your carry on bag and they throw everything on the table. Plus you have to take everything off. This people work for a private company I believe because they don't have official immigration uniform or logo and they are very rude to passenger. They don't have a customer service skill and they don't care about your privacy. The lady that was ahead of me had her personal clothes in the bag and they threw in the table her underwear. She was so embarrassing because everybody was looking her personal cloth. Then they offer you to buy a zip bag for a dollar a piece to put the cosmetic items in. In the plane you can't recline some seat because they are broken plus no movies to watch. Very birding flight.

To make matters worse the gentleman from the protection department name Sabastian ** was so apathetic that he offered another flight which was overnight. I expressed my concern that this is not an option for 2 minors Ages 9 and 6. I would like for a manager to email... This is very incompetent for your call center to make this change without notifying the parents of the minors and expect for minors to stay alone in a hotel room. This is a major concern for a mother. Please reach out to me as soon as possible since your call center has failed to assist me with my concern.

The next morning, no one showed when they expected to open so I called their customer service and was told we should have been 3 hours early for our flight, which wasn't possible based on the schedule booked. After the booking company spent 2 hours on the with them, they changed their story 3 times and ended up quoting 1 h 45 minutes which is a joke at LAX and nowhere in their guidelines for international flights. So, neither the booking company nor Avianca would take responsibility for us missing our flight and I was forced to purchase tickets to get us there. I understand rules and regs but employees should be on the same page and when you have numerous people at a company saying different things, how does that work for customer service?

First of all I had nothing to do with this incident and I was being embarrassed and humiliated by the workers and the security in front of the whole plane and I did not have anything to do with the situation at hand. The people that spoke English and Spanish was trying to tell the security and the workers that they saw the worker push her first and they would not listen to them. My girlfriend reluctantly apologized so that we could get home.

I was so upset and disappointed at the customer service or lack of customer service that we received!!! They also told us if there was any more problems out of us they were going to turn the plane around and go back to Columbia. Mind you I don't have nothing to do with this situation and I'm still being threaten and humiliated all over again!! Unacceptable!!! I demanded a refund and was denied because the investigator working my complaint Luisa ** said that since there was only the one instance with the carry-on bags they could not help me??? One instance I told them this same story I'm writing here???

When we realized what had happened - THE SAME DAY - my niece went back the next day only to be told that she would have to pay again for their mistake. How stupid can you be. Why would anyone pay $115 to change a flight for two days??? We tried to call Avianca to complain only to be told that there was nothing they could do because the connecting flight was with COPA - that she would have to pay again. After much debate she decided to just pay and change the flight.

Now get this - we called from New Orleans the office in Costa Rica to talk to them directly to change the flight and was told that she had to go to the office (THERE IN COSTA RICA) to change the flight. Uhhh duhhh and how can she do that when she is in New Orleans??? Apparently this was a concept that they couldn't understand. Are you kidding me??? What kind of third-rate airline is this??? You can't call to change a flight over the phone??? Never again will I let her use the crappy airline. So glad Southwest now flies there!!! Cheaper and friendlier.

My boyfriend and I decided that it was best to instead of continuing our flight to Ecuador, we could just stop in Colombia since it was part of our original flight. When I asked AVIANCA, if I could just stay in Colombia and not continue to Ecuador, they told me I needed to purchase a whole new ticket. They were insensitive in regards of a natural catastrophe that was out of my hand. They wouldn't give me a break, or try to understand that it wasn't my fault. They made me buy two whole tickets and wouldn't even accommodate me with the extra fee I had to pay for a change of flight. I paid over 3,000 for two new tickets at that very moment. I was very disappointed because they cater to a lot of Latin American countries but they seem to forget that a natural catastrophe had happened a few days ago.

On the way back due to weather conditions our 1st flight was delay for more than 4 hours and Avianca decided to only moved our next flight to the next day therefore making me lose one entire day of MY time when they could of accommodate me on another flight to get to my destination ASAP or sooner than 24 hours after my original arrival time. I wish someone up there at corporate level could see that the small details like these makes a huge difference on getting more customers or losing a lot of customers. Needless to say I WILL NOT be using Avianca Airlines any longer and I WILL TELL MY STORY with this bad experience to all the people I know. I wish I could do more but unfortunately reviews is one of the few thing I can do to let everyone knows how this company deals with these situations.

We asked if they can book us with an affiliated flight with TACA airlines and they said NO! They called security on us because we won't leave until we are taken cared, but they just called the next customer while we were waiting and left us with no one to talk to. They do not care about their customers' safety. We were at Cusco at 530 am, Lima at 10am and waited until 240am for the next flight! Something has to be done with this kind of business practice. Yes we need planes to travel, but from this point forward not with AVIANCA AIRLINES.

We were then referred to the Avianca desk to be put on another flight so we could go home as soon as possible. There were about 50 customers of yours in the same situation as us waiting to be reassured and taken in charge. At the Avianca desk, there were 5 employees of your company completely disorganised, as lost as we were, barely speaking English, not responding while we were asking questions, dealing with several customers at the same time without solving problems, leaving their desks without letting us know when they would be back, not providing us with our rights. That is by far the worst customer service experience we had in our entire lives.

After fighting we managed to be booked on the next flight to London on Friday. When we asked about our connection flight from London to Dublin, we were told that it was our responsibility to book us in on the next flight available with British Airways. It was 2 in the morning and we were fighting to be heard for the past 3 hours so we decided to let that go and we assumed that you were right letting us taking care of our own bookings. At this time of the night, all your customers in the airport were tired and needed to rest. The stress of the situation and the lack of information provided by Avianca were starting to get on the people's nerves.

We asked for a place to sleep and we asked for an access to your lounge to be able to rest as we were supposed to wait 24 hours in the airport for our flight. Of course we were told no by your employees saying that it was due to weather conditions and that they were not able to let us access the lounge and that they couldn't pay for a hotel for us. We were kindly asked to book a hotel by ourselves. This is when people started to get extremely upset threatening legal action against Avianca. We were provided complaint forms to fill in if we were not happy with it. How nice! Some customers bilingual in English and Spanish were kind enough to translate for us otherwise we wouldn't have understood a word of what was going on.

After another 2 hours fighting to get a place to stay, your customer service finally agreed on sending us to hotels. The reason why it wasn't done before was that first the lounge was full of customers in the same situation as us and then that the hotels were booked out. And again, that's fair enough but it should have been said straight away to reassure us. We were told to wait until 7 am in the airport for the shuttle to bring us to the hotel. We were physically and mentally wrecked. We decided to get some sleep on the floor of the airport as so many other customers were doing the same. We woke up at 6 am and the national TV was interviewing Avianca customers on their experience. The cameraman was filming us sleeping on the floor. At 7 we were sent to the hotel for the day with a breakfast and lunch vouchers. We were back at the airport at 7.30 pm to check on our luggages and on our connection flight.

Here again, we were told by one of your supervisor that we shouldn't worry and that our luggages will be in Dublin at the same time as us. My boyfriend spent over an hour at Avianca luggage tracking desk trying to confirm the location of our bags and to make sure the bags would be on the flight for London. He gave all the details of our flights asking your employees to ensure the bags would be with us. Again, we were fully reassured the bags would be in Dublin at our arrival. Also, we were again told that it was our responsibility to book us in on the next British Airways flight available. My friend talked to one of your customers who was in the same situation as us and told us that it was the company's responsibility to book us on our connection flight. What a surprise! She then went to an Avianca check in desk and guess what? Your employee checked us in on the connection flight! What a joke...

My boyfriend and myself were trying to bring gifts back to our family so we spent a bit of time in the airport and he managed to buy bottles of alcohol for the family. We asked the employee at the till if we were fine since we were going to London and then Dublin and we were kindly reassured that it would be ok of course! It's not everyday we are making such a journey away from home so let's treat ourselves after what happened! We were on the flight as scheduled at 11 pm however we had to wait 2 hours due to shuttling on the runway as well as security checks from local authorities on the plane. At this stage nothing was surprising but at least we were on our way back home. We arrived on time in London and ran to the connection desk again to ensure we would get our boarding passes on time.

We arrived at the British Airways desk and the employee there confirmed the booking. And funny enough, she found me twice on the same flight! Again, not surprising anymore! At least I was booked in! We arrived then at security in Heathrow and that's my boyfriend's turn. As the bottles bags were not sealed accordingly to the security rules in Europe, he couldn't take his 100 euros purchase with him on the plane. This is when I started crying. The entire Bogota airport and Avianca experiences were a joke. As if you never wanted people to come back to Colombia! There we met one of your customers who told us that he got on to your customer service over the phone and he got his flight refunded, he got from you access to the lounge, a hotel room straight away. He even got a voucher to buy clothes! What a lucky Avianca customer!

We finally took the plane to Dublin and arrived at 7.30 pm. My friend's bag came out one of the first from the baggage carousel and after 20 minutes waiting, no sign of my boyfriend's or my own bag... Great news as the car keys were in his bag and we live in Cork, 3 hours drive from Dublin. My house keys were in my bag so I couldn't even get inside my own house. We then went to British Airways lost luggage desk in Dublin airport where they checked the location of our bags. It turned out that the bags were scanned 1h50 after we left the gate meaning the bags were still in Bogota and were never on the plane after all the reassurances of your staff in Bogota. My boyfriend's father had to do the journey by train to give us the spare keys to be able to take the car back.

It's Sunday afternoon and we are still on our way home. Basically more than 48 hours later than planned. I had a birthday party of one of my best friends yesterday and another friend was visiting me this weekend and is now gone back to France. We are still not fully realizing what just happened but we have never felt such let down by a company. Nothing went right, there was absolutely no consideration whatsoever of our situation. It is a shame to treat your customers this way. There was no consistency between services offered to your customers and our lack of Spanish knowledge was probably our biggest let down. Again, physically and emotionally we'll need some time to recover from this nightmare. You are promoting international connection Avianca but treating your customers this way is showing that there is still room for improvement.

So, Avianca, I would like to be contacted by your customer service and we are 3 customers willing to get a full refund on our flight tickets. I'm looking forward to hearing from you to resolve the situation - if not we will be more than happy to seek legal advice if needed. Yours truly, 3 dissatisfied Avianca and El Dorado Airport customers.

My child and I have cat allergy. We had severe rash after landing affecting our health and our family trip vacation. The animal was not safe on its bag and passengers were exposed a possible unhealthy situation.

On Dec. 28th my family and I were waiting on line to be checked with our luggage from 8:25am. Our flight was scheduled to take off at 9:10am. The front desk male was very disrespectful by yelling at us while in line, "You are not traveling, you missed your flight." I waited for my turn. It was another lady who had a similar situation and they yelled at her, "Let the girl with black luggage pass." I approached to the counter and this person was wasting my time. He talked to me in a very sarcastic tone making me feel nervous and anxious. I had my child sick and a connection flight from Lima to NY late night. He did not offer any solution to me "I, the customer". He closed the counter and left us stranded with the ticket on my my hands... The crew was there. They were loading the luggage of other passengers and he did not allow me and my family to flight.

Hopefully, the front desk of LAN Peru were very courteous and friendly. They accommodated my family and I, and we travelled safe this time. I paid $750 for 3 one-way tickets to Lima. I understand the late policy. I missed the flight for 5 minutes of arguing with this front desk male. But the customer service they offer to families traveling with children, the customer service they offer traveling with animals unattended on cabin exposing people to get sick, and the customer service of neglecting the customers in general, make AVIANCA airline the worst service for locals and tourism people in Trujillo-Peru.

Well, neither myself or my aunt ever EVER received either a call or an email to let us know that they went ahead and canceled her return portion of the ticket. This is ridiculous as they are supposed to travel at 7:29am tomorrow morning. So my uncle went to the airport and spoke to them and they said that since I paid for the ticket, I have to fix it. Well, they are in South America... I'm in the US. So it's ridiculous. I went ahead and called the airline, whom refused to tell me the problem because I was not the passenger. I advised what happened and the girl Carla said that there was nothing that could be done. I asked for a supervisor - this is now 2 hours into the call... Waiting and waiting. They transferred me to the supervisor by the name of Eance ** (not sure of spelling... And in all honestly I speak perfect Spanish and they were mumbling at times).

I was furious at this point. She told me that I needed to "call the bank and they would tell me what to do". I told her that in case she did not notice, it was Sunday...And banks are closed. And in any case, I paid with my CC so it would make no difference. As she put me on hold I called from my husband's phone as she had me on my phone. And called the cc company myself. Spoke to a man named Charles that advised that on September 24th the charge was paid to Avianca. (It was disputed in July as it showed twice on my account. So it was resolved after that and they charged once) so he told me that they should have not canceled my ticket and that I can send them the copy of my statement. (Not comfortable doing that) Hung up with Charles from credit card/bank and finally the supervisor ** from airline Avianca got back on the phone (hold times were absolutely ridiculous).

I advised her that I have information from Mayra ** from Avianca that she sent the information on the ticket to my CC company, and that it was resolved and paid to Avianca on September 24th having a confirmation and reference number available for them. So the ticket 1- should have never been canceled, and 2-should be fixed/reinstated right away as it was not my mistake but theirs. And I've never been made aware in the first place. Manager ** from Avianca put me on hold various times to check on things. And finally she's said that she sent the information over to the right people and will get this resolved today and that they would call me back today. I said "Great." She took my information which she already had and got off the phone.

Here 3 hours later I called the airline again. Spoke to Carla ** this time, and she was just not wanting to transfer me to a supervisor, or even just do much at all. She told me that the call was recorded and that I was rude. I did say that I was super frustrated at this point and apologized 3 times to her. Advising her that I myself work with the airlines and understand how things work and that I'm sorry if I was rude. But my frustration was getting just too much and they need to just take care of this today as my aunt needs to travel tomorrow. She said that no supervisor was available to talk to me (I asked 3 times to talk to a supervisor) then I told her if there was anyone working on my case yet. And she said that they might call me not today. But not tomorrow. Sometime next week.

I laughed of course as this is absolutely ridiculous. Nothing done. They are not doing anything about their mistake. And they surely charged my card without an issue right away. I'm blown away by this airline's way of doing business. They are very sneaky and non helpful, they are quick to charge and slow to fix their own mistakes. I advised them I would report this to Consumer Affairs, and the girl Carla said "Great." It was seriously like they are laughing in my face for a mistake they made by canceling a flight without advising of it. Insane. This is not the way to operate the business.

On Sunday October 18 I made a purchase on their web page (book # **) to travel with my wife to Panama from Santo Domingo, with a stopover in Bogota. As I tend to travel a lot for work, and although there are people in my company who are responsible for scheduling the flights I always take the trouble to do my part. Look for the best option that was apparently Avianca through flights.google.com, there was a price difference of $ 100 more on Avianca's page reflected beside Google, I did not see it as a warning, "Debi".

I made the purchase process through its Web site, select my top choices. To my surprise I could not choose seats "for tariff restrictions" put my payment information and fill out a form "to validate my information." Completed all I got a message in my mailbox saying that in 8 hours get my ticket as it was in my case validation. So far so good. Since this is my odyssey begins, ordeal for been charged and issued my ticket.

Spent more than 20 hours after we received mail from the website, call the contact center to ask if there was a problem and that they had not sent the ticket and no message indicating the status of my case, I was informed that due to "x " situation My ticket had been delayed more than average but they had put my case with priority. That was on Monday October 19th. On Tuesday I called again and they had told me that during the famous Monday's receive mail, they said the same and I will receive the mail on that day. That was on Tuesday October 20. Arrived Wednesday and had no Avianca's mail, decided to call again to ask the same, I said the same. They asked me for patient as they were working on my case. I decided to wait and give them the benefit of the doubt. That was on Wednesday October 21.

On Thursday I called and a diligent agent contacted me with a department where they validated my card and told me that day without fail I will receive the famous mail. They told me everything was fine and I apologize for the delay. That was on Thursday 22 October. Step on Thursday and arrived the Friday. I called, same story. They indicated me that without fail that day would be all solved. Friday, October 23. Saturday came, I had no mail in my mailbox. They told me that everything was ok and validated so that day I would receive the mail. I asked to speak to a supervisor to express the difficulties I have had, I received a surprised expression from the representative and supposedly informed me that he will bring any, after a few seconds He said there was no shift of supervisor, he asked me to call in two hours or over the day.

I asked for a department or someone to listen to my complaints and referred me to a web form for such purposes. Complete the form and still have not given me answer. Saturday, 24 October. To all this I do not even get the mail, indicating either the status of my purchase. Every day I was checking my reservation by page Avianca.com sometimes left with the state that was not found or rather could have been canceled, in others it could only display the itinerary departure, others showed only a mistake.

Each time you call I had to navigate the IVR to 3 times, each time my call was answered by sales and they do me "could help" according to them, he explained that when marking would select option 1 to Spanish, 4 for product support web and 1 for Avianca.com but I said "it did not, scored sales", hinting that I was an ape and did not know a simple dial numbers on your phone.

On Saturday I'm tired and I wrote publicly challenging Avianca through his Twitter account that solve my case and at least give answer, making a bet that would not solve and at least ten days to reply to me. They answered on Sunday 25 October. Express my case as requested by a private message indicating what happened.

On Monday October 26 called to give me news of my case, "Hallelujah"... right? They told me that unfortunately problems in billing my reservation had been "canceled" because there was no quota on the flight that was selected and available for my departure would almost midnight at my destination. I thought it was a bad joke, but rather was a mockery.

Avianca How I come to say that billing problems I canceled my ticket? Call every day since I made the "buy" through its website, each day. Ask about my case and received no answer "never", and now you tell me that my ticket was canceled? To this I replied indignantly that no, would not accept that he had already been through a lot and it was not my fault. They replied that they understood and would contact me within an hour.

In the meantime monitoring via Twitter they gave me and asked if I had been contacted, tell them what happened, but after waiting for more than three hours tells them that I had been left waiting. I was asked again the data via Twitter to "manage my case." They told me that they would contact me as my case had been sent to "appropriate" department, then where was my case since Sunday 18 October?

I said thank you and I would expect. Arrived Tuesday October 27, and they have not contacted me. Honestly I do not care to travel with Avianca, let alone keep waiting for a ticket and charge me for a service that is offered. I will continue using COPA. My recommendation to all who have to travel is Avianca try to use as little as possible, if you can NEVER. Whenever I travel to Panama, I use COPA Airlines. I decided to try another company but Avianca is definitely not an option. If Avianca is interested, it has never happened to me with these companies: COPA Airlines, JetBlue, American Airlines, Delta Airlines, Southwest Airlines, Gol Airlines.

I then called my husband at work and told him to call. Again he spent over an hour on the phone being passed back and forth. First they couldn't find our reservation, even though I had a booking code, then they found it, then they jacked up the price $200 because they did not charge my card 8 hours ago when I was supposed to receive this elusive e-mail. After ripping the poor soul on the other end of the phone up one side and down the other, our original price for the ticket was honored and our reservation magically re-appeared.

SCREW ME TWICE YOU LOSE MY BUSINESS... 2nd Trip: My husband had to fly back to El Salvador this morning as my father in law is near the end of his life. I booked the ticket on Monday for only my husband, using the credit card that had only his name on it and waited for 6 hrs for my phantom e-mail that never arrived. I thought I would get ahead of the game this time and have my husband call ahead to go through the verification process. After all, I have a booking code. They would not talk to my husband because we had not yet received the e-mail. REALLY!!!! So we wait. Another 3 hours go by and still no e-mail. My husband called back and was again transferred multiple times. I told him when someone gets on the phone to just cancel the flight and I will book it through Priceline. Of course, Avianca is the only airline with non-stop service to El Salvador.

The ticket was $100 more than I was originally going to pay but hey...at least I could get the flight right? WRONG. Priceline wouldn't take my cc. I called the bank... No problem there. I called Priceline.... No problem there. It seems that Avianca somehow blocked me from buying a ticket. I went on to Delta's website and, booked the flight in 30 seconds with no hassle and they took my card. Interesting. Husband is on his way to be with his family no thanks to Avianca. It's a shame because once we finally straightened everything out the first time, the flight was really nice. Too bad they screw it up on the front end. Me nor my family, including my extended family because that's how we roll, will ever use Avianca. Too bad for them because we travel a lot.

Well I'm explaining to the lady at the desk that it is a complete fraud for them to leave me in a foreign country and deny me a seat for being an "hour" late (take in mind that the flight leaves at 8:00pm). Her response "you're late, it's your fault and there's nothing we can do for you," not to mention her totally uncalled for rude attitude (then she walks away and leaves me talking on my own before another passenger shows up at 7:15pm and somehow is able to board but yet I'm the one who's late???) I mean what the hell is this **? What kind of customer service do they even offer. THEY OBVIOUSLY HAVE PRIORITY BECAUSE THE MAN SHOWING UP LOOKED LIKE HE WAS FLYING FIRST CLASS. Beware future flyers. This airline will scam you poor as now I have to pay $175 for missing my flight plus the ticket difference, basically a complete new flight.

The SECOND THING that I go through is their call center a number not given to me by anyone working in that ** Guatemalan airport that also lacks customer service and personnel , but by me who at this point is being kicked out because the airport closes at 8:00pm and there's no one to help me. Well to make things short, their call center sucks at customer service as well, even though I spoke to a supervisor who is as useless as the first person because they both grabbed on to the point that I was late and that if l would have done a web check in they would be able to take me in 30 mins before the flight takes off. ABSOLUTELY ABSURD AND NOW I'M STILL HERE IN GUATEMALA. No one was able to help me in this airline and like I mentioned now they are sucking more money out of me. The supervisor kept talking about the fee I have to pay and how it's my fault for being there two hours before the flight and not three.

I just don't understand how it's not possible for them to check me in after an hour goes by? I don't know if this goes with every other airline but this has been the worst nightmare ever. I have so much more to say about my experience with this airline but I am so exhausted after being on the phone for hours JUST TO HEAR THE SAME PENALTY FEE OVER AND OVER. There's no way of avoiding to pay the penalty although this is a multi million company who is not dying from a lack of money. They couldn't do something as simple as at least rescheduling my flight for the next day. I feel like it's their fault that I missed my flight and just don't understand why they couldn't find me seat reservation to start off with when I called two times one Saturday and one Sunday to confirm my flight for Monday.

Never was I told about the web check in. Words honestly cannot explain this airline and my experience yesterday. Their English speaking customer service reps have the worst English ever where you can barely understand and after bouncing back and forth with English and then only Spanish speaking supervisors in which I had to find a translator to explain for me my situation. Never will I fly with them again and honestly hope this company goes bankrupt. They are a complete SCAM that don't even deserve one star. AVOID BY ALL MEANS.

As the time kept getting closer to the flight, the fees were getting higher and higher until she was told that it will be $600 and that it needed to get pay in El Salvador. No one carries money in El Salvador. They don't even have change for $10 bill. Well, I told my mother to get it, that I was going to pay for it. Well again another lie that she need to call Avianca and make another reservation. I called Avianca here in the USA at their 800 #. They told me that there were no more flights, that a regular ticket was $800 so I got sooo upset and told the lady, "I will not feed you another peso." I check on cheapOair and got another ticket two weeks later for $480. They made me waste so much money. I hate their policies.

On my last trip to El Salvador, the departure time from IAD was scheduled for 11:20 am. We did not leave until almost 4pm arriving late at night and exposing us to a dangerous time to travel from the airport to our final destinations of origin since the delinquency and vandalism in El Salvador is the worse at present. With apologizing they made up. My mom come to the area this past Oct, I paid over $600 for her ticket. The flight was supposed arrived at IAD at 9:20 pm. The flight did not land until 12:30 am and their compensation because I called them and complain. They issued her a $100.00 voucher to be used within a year and according to them it can be use it to purchase a future airfare or an extra weight on luggage.

When she was going back to El Salvador in January one of her pieces of her luggage was over by 5 pounds so they charged us $80.00. Handed the voucher and did not work. She almost missed the flight because they could not validate the voucher and if I did not pay they will not check in her luggage. Their fee for extra overweight over the permitted limited automatically is $80.00 no matter if is just one extra pound or up to 25.

It is amazing that Avianca gets away with the way they had established business, by manipulated the fare's prices to their convenience and not with the market standards nor the customers satisfactions. Their biggest confidence is that they know that we don't have other choices for our senior’s parents to flight since they are the only airline that flies non-stop to El Salvador. It's really amazing to see that they don't care taking the enormous advantage on this fact. It will be nice that someone will take a closer look to the way they perform and how they treat the customers since I know I'm not the only one frustrated with AVIANCA.

Meanwhile while I was waiting, I called Avianca from another phone line and told the agent what was happening. She was very courteous and tried to help, but it took her also over an hour to hear my complaint about George and my situation. She gave me a confirmation number for the call and assured me that Avianca would contact me within 24 hours. At that point I hung up from the previous call. Avianca never called me back. I gave them one week to resolve the issue assuming they would have to listen to the recorded conversation, but did not hear from them. I called them and explained the whole situation again to another agent that promised someone would contact me, they never did. 3 days later, I called them again, went thru the same thing, they took all my phone numbers they assured me they would contact me.

Finally 11:08 P.M. same day of my last phone call. My phone rings, it is Avianca. Off course I answered and talked to the agent. Explained the situation again, she told me they could not do anything unless I paid the penalty again, which I had already done. I refused and asked to talk to a supervisor. After 20 minutes of waiting the supervisor comes to the phone. I explained the situation again. She refused to put me on the original flight unless I paid the $25 penalty again for both tickets. Avianca changed the departure time without notifying us and when we made the change the new itinerary showed a different time. Because I made the call to change the flight, they call it a voluntary change, therefore they do not take responsibility. I have not taken that flight yet, but after reading all of your reviews, I think we may cancel our trip to Medellin totally just to avoid any contact with that company.

We are Delta Diamond medallion members and are used to excellent customer service. I think the reason why Avianca is abusing the customers is because they can get away with murder. Any other company in the States would be penalized big time for much less. Thanks to all of you for your reviews.

Out of the blue the one male pulls his cell phone and looks like he's talking to someone from Avianca. He hands the phone to the attendant and says "this is the pilot on the phone I know him, and says I can come through." The attendant answers and indeed says "Only you can come in." How fair is that? How inconsiderate are they to care for this guy and not care for the rest, or the babies I had with me? Repulsive service! What was worst was their lack of knowledge on what to say to the customers. No one knew where to direct me, how is this possible?

Am I the only person in the history of Avianca to ever miss a flight? How can they leave me stranded in a country I don't know without telling me where to go or what to do? After insisting to talk to the supervisor... After 5 hrs of waiting for this idiotic person she shows up and doesn't even acknowledges me. I had to practically wave her down. 5 hrs of waiting for her to say to go to the city that at Avianca office will be able to help me. All this after the "suppose Avianca office already close." Why didn't the attendants there tell me this simple information? I had no idea! I had to wait for the next day to go. Walking in a strange city with 2 kids is not easy.

After finally finding this office, the Rep there says "Sorry nothing we can do here. You have to contact someone at where you bought your ticket from." Again why couldn't Avianca tell me this simple instruction? I bought my tickets through a third party CheapOAir.com. I didn't know how to get a hold of them since I was out of the country. I had to manage to find a phone booth and reach them. Of course they were helpful there. But for Avianca to not direct me there from the get go is frustrating, irritating and ridiculous!!!

Their fees for missing a flight are insane out of this world!!! You pay a fee for losing your flight to which ok I agree to. But charging you 35% of the ticket actual price is absurd!!! Awful disrespectful people! Heartless and careless for a mom and two kids. The supervisor for Avianca that toyed me around for hours in Argentina's airport is **. You are incompetent worker who doesn't work there for the customers! But for the money only! Will never ever flight Avianca neither will my family or friends!

What serious airline leaves a passenger on the ground at the gate with a boarding pass on hand, the gate open, other passengers boarding, etc... My experience in the 30+ years I have been traveling overseas is the opposite. They will even hold planes when passengers are "connecting." Also not unusual that an agent is waiting at the gate of the arriving flight to help get to the connecting flight, but our experience was that instead of Avianca employees wanting us to make our connection their goal was the opposite.

They seem to want us to not make the connection and regardless of how much I tried they achieve their goal. Then they LEFT us to go do what needed to be done. Meaning, go find the luggage, then go find where to rebook the flight, then go find customer relations..What the hell is wrong with these people? They don't have a clue on how to handle a customer, and let alone a "premier cabin paying customer" (those that make the most profit for any airline). Stay away from this airline and if you don't hope for a "non issue" flight because if you need anything done to help you, you are going to understand what I am telling you.

Needless to say, I was not able to even read my e-mail until after 6 PM. So when I called up the call center, they said I needed to start over with making the modifications, and couldn't even give me an explanation of why I needed to call back. The second time took well over 2 hours on the phone and more than a dozen(!) times on hold! This is the most incompetent and horrendous service that I have ever dealt with… It is simply inexcusable! I will never in my life fly with this airline again under ANY circumstances, and unless you want to deal with an enormous headache, I strongly encourage you to do the same.

After 45 minutes of arguing with this guy we were given a flight via United. It incurred over $150 in international calls, as well as $100.00 in baggage fees (via United). Ultimately they offered nothing. No compensation for out of pocket expenses, no reimbursement, no attempt to make this right. Their position was that we got home.... period.... so not compensation was necessary.

This is the worst airline I have ever flown.... We will NEVER fly Avianca again and I would highly recommend you take note before booking with them. No one speaks English and they have no desire to be accommodating or "customer" friendly. Definitely do not subscribe to the "customer is always right" philosophy. Do yourself a huge favor and avoid Avianca at all costs!!

So given all of that, I decided to use my travel vouchers but you can't apply the voucher information on their website. You have to book through their call center and they will charge you for this service. I asked them to waive this fee and they won't. Why should I have to use the small amount of credit that Avianca gave me only to hand some of it back to them? This is "double dipping" to me and I seriously doubt that any reputable airline would pull this cheesy maneuver. In fact, American and European airlines would be required to provide me with at least $1000 in travel vouchers and probably closer to $2000. Avianca plays by their own rules. I am wondering whether, Small claims court would be effective for this case. In the meantime I have contacted the USDOT and filed a complaint with them. Unfortunately for me, in order to travel to Ecuador or Colombia Avianca is the largest carrier so I might be stuck using them again.

On my way home from Quito, I was bumped again in San Salvador, transferred 1 hour to a hotel for 4 hours, brought all the way back to the airport to catch my connection to Los Angeles. Avianca gave me money for my missed transportation and eventually, after many days and calls, I received a $150 voucher from Avianca. I definitely am not happy with this $150 offer as it was even more of an inconvenience than getting bumped on the way down. For that inconvenience I got $300, but only $150 on this leg of the trip. Personally I am unhappy about the $300 as well. It should have been way more. A domestic US carrier would be required to pay more compensation.

What Avianca did is totally wrong. In addition, I called their customer service dept. at least 8 times and spent numerous hours on the phone with them, only to be promised each time that a representative would get back to me. They never did. I finally told them that I would take them to Small Claims court. I will now ask for cash rather than settling for a voucher. I am so fed up with this joke of an airline that I do not wish to do business with them anymore.

Great, since as a foreigner you can't just go along and open a bank account in Ecuador. But luckily I was able to use my girlfriend's. The other bad news was that it was gonna take about 40 working days!!! Now after about a month I called up to check on the status. They said it was approved and I'm gonna get the 563 USD (note how suddenly 45 USD instead of 25 are missing) in about 20-30 days. When I asked why suddenly 20 Dollars less they could not tell me, maybe some fee. I still wonder if I am actually gonna get that money back, but I know one thing. After so much trouble I will never again fly with Avianca, never ever again!

So now my bank calls and they say, "Sorry we can't really help you cause it's in another department." What does that mean? My advice it's not to fly Avianca. Their service sucks. Another story, my gf was traveling also from Bogota to Miami last month when they announced how they were overbook but if you stay, you get 2000 USD. After the plane left, they told her, "Oops sorry we mean 200 USD." The woman doesn't know how to speak English, and what could she do, the flight had already left. Just so you know what type of airlines these is.

Mr. ** told us that we could only check 3 people and not the others even though we made him aware that we are two families traveling on a vacation with kids. We were told the gates are information why we were closed out. We requested Mr. ** for more being discarded from middle of check-in. The reason stated was that the gates were closed now. While this was going on we did witness at other counters there were still people who were checking in for the same flight. Politely, we requested Mr. ** numerous time to allows us for next 15 mins to check in and reasoned why he is stopped us from middle of the check in while other are still doing it. After requesting numerous times (at around 8:30 AM, around 60 mins to flight) he agreed to check in but only for 3 people only and not the others.

It was really humiliating and disgusting to witness the how ** had no respect for travelers with families by playing games and telling that he would allow only 3 people of check in. We continued to beg him and explain him that we are a part of 6 traveling together on a family vacation but Mr. ** continued to be disrespectful. At around 8:35 AM he asked us last time saying that he would allow only 3 people of check in out of 6. Since we were a 2 families traveling together we politely declined as we felt we were being discriminated. We were asked to reschedule the flight and have to fare difference which cost us an additional 1100$ per family. We had spent next 7-8 over phone with the service center to find a suitable flight for our travels. It is very hard for us to still believe the way we were treated by Avianca and feel extremely humiliated with the experience that we went through.

Fast forward to this last weekend - I need to book my tickets to Costa Rica, and I go to check my LifeMiles (which I have done before) and lo and behold it says my number doesn't exist. So I call the next day... On hold for ever and the friendly guy tells me I have no LifeMiles account with that number. He asked me to send a jpg of my LifeMiles card to support@lifemiles.com. I do and I provide a jpg of my passport. They re-instate my LifeMiles account number (the very same) but NO miles. I have spent most of my week on hold with Avianca LifeMiles - begging and demanding to talk to a supervisor but one week later I have not... I have spent hours on hold and then they disconnect me... Crazy!!!

They want me to send all my ticket receipts - of which I have none, because they told me at checkin that all my miles were on my account. I had no need to save those as it was already documented... I have outlined all my flights for the last 4 years in my emails to support@lifemiles.com, but I have received nothing - no communication... Every time I call they tell me there is no supervisors or managers available. What is wrong with these people??? I need help because I am very disgusted with the amount of work I am having to do to get them to actually communicate with me. Surely they can look up my name and see all my flights.

What do I do now? My vacation time from work has been wasted on hold and being pissed... I work all week and they tell me a supervisor is eventually gonna call me… but I cannot call them. What if they call while I am with clients and can't answer the phone. I am so frustrated. I did my part. I paid my ticket fees. I showed up on time. I made sure to check in with my LifeMiles card. They deleted me and all my miles and can’t give me the respect of letting me talk to a supervisor...

It was remarkable to me that senior Avianca management could allow my complaint to wallow over seven months without immediate and decisive intercession to preserve customer goodwill and Avianca’s reputation. Government action to penalize the airline has been opaque. They merely informed me my complaint was received. They could not compel Avianca to perform settlement with me and that they would decide whether to impose governmental penalties. The airline now hides behind lack of significant competition, which, if it were otherwise would force Avianca either to responsive customer service or into bankruptcy.

Now they say in order to use the $1200.00 that we paid, on our next flight we can no longer go to their website and to look up the rates we have to call in every single time we think we can get time off work. Have you ever heard of such malarkey? Just amazing. How can they do this to the American public and get away with this? We are in our late 50's and I being a janitor and my wife being a receptionist for a non-profit, do they not understand what it took to save and plan for our anniversary, just to have it stopped because they feel 65 minutes before the flight is not enough?

We are not very tech savvy and it took over 45 minutes when we got home to just look up their restrictions about when and where to go to. At my age I have NEVER heard of having to be at an airport 3 hours before the flight. They are going against all norms when it comes to what Americans are used to. We don't, nor ever had text or web stuff on our phones. And then to do this, again just amazing.

Many of us including my family were sent to hotel without even any apology from the staffs. The supervisor in Costa Rica even said that it is not his fault, nor my fault, but it is only Avianca's Fault! It sounded really awkward! He works at Avianca, but everything is Avianca's fault, not his fault!!! THE STAFFS ARE TERRIBLE!! They cannot even say sorry. When he gave me a airline voucher for the compensation, I asked him to at least extend the expiry date one year longer because our next visit to Latin America not scheduled within a year. But he said "NO", so we didn't accept the voucher because it would be useless!!

After 12 hours waiting time, we boarded the rescheduled flight. If the flight had not had no problem, I might have forgotten this terrible experience soon. However, on the way to Mexico, something worse happened to the flight. The pilot's window was cracked, and it made us really scared! In that emergent situation, the staffs spoke Spanish only, so I had to ask the Mexican lady next me who can speak English! Eventually, we did emergency landing in El Salvador. They said there was no flight to Mexico at that night, so we had to be sent to a hotel again!! We were in panic because my husband had an important meetings with his clients the next day, so he needed to go back home during the night. He asked the staffs to let him go to Mexico to catch the connecting flight. The staff arranged a ticket for him so it seemed that his business would not be involved in this incident. I was relieved even though I had to stay in El Salvador with my children for the night without my husband.

However, something we cannot really tolerate happened after that. IT WAS REALLY NOT ACCEPTABLE. Before my husband boarded the flight, somebody said to him he was going to miss the connecting flight anyway. After hearing that he denied boarding because he was very worried about us, so he wanted to stay with us in El Salvador if he would not be able to catch the flight anyway. At that time, one of the staffs persuaded my husband to board the flight and promised him that they would ask air Canada to wait for him. However, HE ENDED UP MISSING THE FLIGHT!! In addition, your staffs blamed my husband for it, making a terrible excuse that he boarded the flight, fully recognizing that he was supposed to miss the connecting flight. The staffs, they didn't admit anything wrong done by them. Their attitude was really terrible! As a result, he was sent to a hotel in Mexico and waited for 13 hours and EVEN ARRIVED LATER THAN US. As a result, his business was even involved in this awful incident!

I wrote the complaint letter with other Canadians together in El Salvador airport and my husband also wrote a complaint letter in Mexico airport. It was Last August, but the Avianca has been still ignoring us. Avianca made our meaningful volunteering trip a nightmare! They shouldn't have changed the original flight if they didn't have enough seats for all of the passengers who already purchased the air tickets. They easily change their airline schedules for their own profit, not caring about customers. They should appreciate people who use their airline and their priority should be customers' satisfaction and comfort in the long run. It cannot be their profit. If you want to enjoy your trip, don't go for Avianca! Yours could be a nightmare too!!

The next day we were at the airport checking in and we were told that there had been 2 tickets purchased for the same person and that's when we realized they had charged us for the original ticket. We immediately called Avianca and told them that they charged us for a ticket after they told us that the payment had been denied. And they told us that we have to go on their website and submit a refund form. Even though they can clearly see that there were 2 tickets purchased for the same date and same name. We called our credit company and they are going to fight the charge and get our money back. We only purchased from them because it was an emergency situation. We will stay away from this company if at all possible.

The next morning, April 22, I found my flight had been confirmed but my partner's had not. Calling Avianca again, we found that the agent on the previous night did not/could not process both tickets on one charge. I'm not really sure why but I went through the whole process again and was told, "Don't worry, everything is fine." We left the house, feeling somewhat relieved that the problem was taken care of. We returned from our errands only to find that my partner's confirmed ticket had not been emailed. We called Avianca's customer service line and they found no information about my partner's ticket.

We have now been on hold for over an hour and we are no closer to resolving this than when we started 2 days ago. I am not impressed with, nor do I believe they know, have or even understand what customer service is. So far, no explanation from Avianca, no apology, no... wait - news alert - they have hung up on me!!! I cannot express my outrage and my disappointment in this airline, and the incredible lack of customer service. I will say I am not fluent in Spanish but an international company should have some English-speaking CSRs. This has been a trip we have planned for 2 years and Avianca has completely screwed this trip up.

I sent in a complaint through their online system. A representative responded and told me that since none of the flight attendants remembered this situation that they were closing the case. I responded with further details of the situation and flight attendants, as well as enclosed multiple pictures of the defecation on the seat. They responded back stating that the case was closed and they are not spending anymore time on it. Shame on them! This is a health liability! As a paying customer, no one should be required to take on such unsanitary conditions and sit in someone else's feces.

In Bogota as he was boarding the AeroGal plane owned by AVIANCA, one of the baggage guys yanked the 24x12 bag from my relative. He did not even have the chance to say to them that he absolutely needed to keep the bag with him. Well when he arrived in Quito all of his bags arrived except for the one bag that carried all of his medicines and electronic equipment and $20K. He filed a claim. AVIANCA stated that they would deliver his bag to him the next day.

Well the bag never came until 7 days later and when it did finally show up, it came with all the locks cut off and zip ties replaced. When he opened the bag everything was gone. He had gotten very ill due to him coming off of all of his medicines immediately. He medicines for HIV, Parkinson’s, Early Stage Dementia, Diabetes, ** and several others for pain and anxiety. He became extremely ill and even was hospitalized several times. Avianca offered him $1,000.00 but he felt he needed to refuse.

To this day AVIANCA HAS NOT PAID MY RELATIVE ONE RED CENT AND IT HAS BEEN OVER 10 MONTHS NOW THAT THIS HAS OCCURED. He has had to obtain legal help to force AVIANCA to compensate him for this catastrophic medical incident. He went to Ecuador to try to enjoy the country and get away from harm in the States, but he has not been able to enjoy Ecuador at all and has come to whole other set of danger all due to AVIANCA’s negligence.

I ended up calling back again and talking to Guadalupe, who then proceeded to tell me that the reason I only received 599 miles on a trip from Los Angeles to Costa Rica was because the miles changed depending on the date that I travel. I can understand a small mileage difference. Many factors go into calculating mileage, but the average amount of miles from Los Angeles to Costa Rica is 2,723 miles. There is no way to get there in 599 miles! There just isn't! But when I tried explaining that the mileage did not make sense she continued to repeat the same information to me over and over again. I asked for a supervisor and was told that all of the supervisors who spoke English were in a meeting! Every single one of them! I was again given the option that I could call back in a few hours or I could make a complaint online. I adamantly refused and asked again to speak with a supervisor.

Ana ** was the supervisor I spoke with who explained to me that because one of my flights was through COPA airlines, who she stated was a sister company to TACA, that I received reduced miles on that flight. I asked her to explain to me why I would be penalized for flying with a sister company. She just said that I would have to contact them to figure out why I received a reduced amount of miles for that flight specifically. I asked her where on the website or in the terms and conditions it said this. She said that it didn't; but if I wanted to pull up that particular ticket, it should say somewhere on there.

I wanted some very simple questions answered: 1. Was the account associated with the LifeMiles member number of ** ever at any time a silver member? The answer I received was “Yes, in November 2011;” 2. How many miles were accumulated the year I was a silver member? The answer I received was Guadalupe did not have that information. Only that I had flown 9 times from Los Angeles to Costa Rica; 3. If I am a LifeMiles member and fly frequently with your airline, why am I penalized for flying with your sister company? Shouldn't those miles accumulated be the same as if I were flying with TACA? Otherwise what is the point of flying within your sister companies at all?

The answer I received: Ana said that “It was the other airlines' job to provide the information of lower miles being accumulated during that flight.” When asked to speak with her supervisor, I was told that there are none. That call center had no other person I could speak with. I asked for an outside number of someone who did not work in the call center that I could talk to, but she said there was no one.

Now my questions are these: 1. If I had been given the full amount of miles for the trips in 2012 with COPA Airlines, would I have been able to continue to be a silver member?; 2. If yes, then I would like to have my silver membership reinstated and to continue using your airline for my frequent flights to and from Costa Rica; 3. If no, then I would like to know the specific number of miles I accumulated and how far from the minimum amount I was at that time. I do not feel that answers to these questions are too much to ask for. I am completely frustrated with your customer service call center and would rather not have to deal with them anymore.

Their forms mean nothing and would not be accepted in any court. Contracts cannot legally be formed when one party is being coerced. They have lots of tricks to make you miss flights and connections so they can hit you with penalties. Always take them to court to recover these unjust charges. They will back down even if you threaten to file suit. Small claims is very easy, and Avianca will have to pay all court costs and maybe even attorney fees. But you don't really need an attorney for small claims. To serve them, find their registered agent in your state and send a copy of the complaint there. They will settle before court, and that is really the only way to get their attention.

He refused to talk to me after that, huffed away, was loud and his tone in his voice was not required at all. I wonder if this is simply what he is, the quality of crew members Avianca chooses or is it his unfortunate inefficiency in English? If the latter is the reason, then Avianca should do a better job in bringing in better qualified people to do the service. I would urge the company to take actions against ** (if that is the correct name he has given!). His sharp tongue and bristly body language is unwanted and very, very unfortunate. And to add, when I went to get his name from him, he stood there like a plastic doll. No apologizing, no saying sorry.

At the check-in desk of Air France, we had to pay an additional airport tax of 77 Venezuelan Bolivar per person, so 154 Bolivar in total. This is 28 euros. Since this is absolutely not our fault (we requested a direct luggage transfer), we would like an immediate refund of this money. See attached scan which proves that the luggage was sent to Caracas (CCS) and not to Dusseldorf and the receipt of the payment. Looking forward to your positive reply within 5 working days.

After 2 hours of waiting (1 am by then), someone called the manager (who sucked at it) said they had booked us a flight in 7 hours (at 8am) through Avianca via Bogota. They offered us a hotel room, a refund on the ticket, and a voucher for food. The ladies at the counter were such a bunch rude bitches, that my boyfriend ended up snapping at them. We never got a hotel room, and the food voucher was for $10 dollars! At least they gave us a $650 voucher, but still.

But our nightmare had just started. After waiting another 3 hours (4 am by then), in that freezing JFK airport, we got in line to check in with Avianca, because according to the Aerogal people, we had been registered with Avianca already. For our surprise, our names weren't there, we had nothing to do with Avianca and again no one knew anything (that's all we heard all night, by the way).

Another 3 hours passed and we were still in the blue without knowing what was going on, waiting and waiting. More empty promises came, as the general manager of Aerogal, who is the most disrespectful bitch, told us she was gonna put us 3 (my boyfriend, a friend and myself) in first class to make us feel better about all this **! Another lie! We got to the counter for the fifth time to check in, and of course, we weren't in First but in Economy, which at this point didn't really matter. By 8:30 am we finally got to get in the Avianca airplane just to be treated like ** by their flight attendants because we weren't Avianca, but Aerogal.

Us 3 are musicians, and the reason of our trip to Ecuador was a gig in a festival in Guayaquil that day that all this happened. Of course we got to the gig late, tired, restless, and annoyed, after 24 hours traveling because some stupid people that sent the wrong Aerogal plane from Guayaquil to JFK. Really? You have to be that retarded to make such mistake. We learned our lesson of never ever, use Aerogal and Avianca again, and Ill make sure my friends and family don't use them either.

The incompetents at Avianca did not complete the transaction properly and they waited until the night before to tell us that there was a problem, and they had cancelled our reservations. Then, they wanted to charge me $1,000 more for the tickets the next day. I found last-minute tickets with American for $500 more. In my opinion, Avianca has to be the worst airline in Latin America and among the worst in the world. Watch out for them, they can easily ruin your travel plans and make you send a whole lot more if you must make the trip. I will never again attempt to book a flight in Avianca.

At the check-in counter, I was told that I could not take anything into the plane with me, not even my backpack. I was surprised by this. I thought I was hearing the agent incorrectly since I do not speak Portuguese very well. I protested because I had fear that the laptop computer would be damaged. Then, the agent spoke to me in English and advised me twice that I could not take any bags into the plane. I explained that the bag contained a new laptop computer.

Still, the agent insisted that I could not take any bag into the plane so I allowed him to check the backpack into the plane along with the other three pieces of luggage. But before handing the bag over, I again complained that I had fear something would happen to the laptop computer. After the agent spoke to me again, in English, that I could not carry anything into the plane, I simply said okay!

On arrival at our house in Cuiaba, I unpacked my backpack and presented the laptop computer to my step-daughter. Unfortunately, the laptop had been damaged and we could not obtain any images on the screen of the computer. I tried for two hours to reboot the computer and obtain images on the screen but nothing worked.

Angrily, I got into the car and drove to the airport in Cuiaba to report the damage to the computer. Unfortunately, there were no employees at the Avianca desk. I returned home and used the telephone to call Avianca Customer Service to report the damages.

When I arrived at the airport in Lima to return home, Avianca charged me a $75 fee at the check-in counter. I gave them my credit card to pay for the fee, but after they swiped the card, they said that it did not go through. I then gave them a second card, and once again, they swiped the card and said that it also did not go through. I then stepped out of line, went to a nearby ATM machine and pulled out cash. I went back to the counter, paid my $75 fee in cash and got a receipt showing I paid in cash. A week later, I realized that I had a $75 charge on both of the credit cards I had given Avianca.

For the last three months, I have been trying to get reimbursed of the $150 which Avianca owes me. I have my receipt showing that I paid cash in Lima. I have both of my credit card statements, but it's taking the company months to reimburse me! Calling them is fruitless. It's very difficult to get a hold of anyone who speaks English or speaks it well enough for either of us to understand each other. I have been emailing someone in the customer service, but all he can tell me is that they are in the process of validating my account, and then they will reimburse me. There is no office in my state I can visit to speak to these people one on one and show them my receipt and statements. The whole thing feels really shady.

Do not fly with this airline!

Due to hurricane Irene, all airports in the NY tri-state area were closed on the 28th. An Avianca agent in Cali advised my husband on the next available flight to JFK which would be on September 9th. Because he had to be back at work as soon as possible, he asked them what other option was available. They advised him to take a flight to Miami, Florida scheduled for Monday, August 29th, and he accepted and was charged an additional $241.02 for the change.

I called Avianca after he arrived and expected them to refund the additional charge since the change was based on circumstance beyond our control. Avianca's response was that he would have been offered a waiver if he would have travelled on the date, the next available date, which was on September 9th but because he chose to travel to Miami, he had forfeited his waiver.

This is incredible; the flight was cancelled by the airline due to inclement weather. To later claim that they offered the passengers affected by this event a waiver to travel on a different date is a ludicrous. They took advantage of a situation that was out of our control.

Later at the time of the checking in the luggage, there was a man very rude and didn't let my brother check the luggage in, so he needed to make another line and the lady pushing the wheel chair has to wait until my brother made other line to check the luggage in.

When they arrived to Bogota, Avianca didn't have the wheel chair for my sister in love and they have to wait long time in the plane long time and there were other two more persons disable, in Bogota they needed to make connection to Barranquilla, at the time to depart from Bogota, they were told that the fly was cancel and Avianca Associates saying that it was because of the weather which it was not true, so my brother and his wife were sent to a hotel.

This is were the nightmare started, first my sister in love was wheel to the bus, and the bus didn't have a ramp, so she need to climb the stairs of the bus with a lot of difficulty (one of her legs is bent to the outside) she can't walk well and climb. When she got in the bus there was not a sit for her and she was told to sit and an area for luggage and at the time that to sit down, she felt down on her butt, then when they arrive to the hotel she needed to jump from the bus down the street by the hotel.

The next day, Dec/19/10, they were picked up at the hotel to the airport and she needed to do the same, then, at the ticket counter they were complaining because my brother took the wheel chair out to the hotel. Later when they needed to board the plane Avianca put them on a plane that needed to claim the stairs, so Avianca got to men and a chair to carried my sister in love (a woman that weight 254lb.) into the plane. Well, they arrive to Barranquilla and at the time to claim their luggage Avianca told them that their luggage were lose and that they were bring them to them at my mother's house at one o'clock and they having arrive and I started to call Avianca to let them know that in one of the suitcase are my sister in love medication. I only packed medication for her in her purse for three days, I didn't think that Avianca still so disorganize, and I was put on hold for one hour and fifteen minutes, then I was disconnected.

I called again and this time another lady put me on hold and then she put me to star choosing department again something that I already did. I still don't know what is going to be missing from the luggage since they have enough time to go through and choose what they want to take, and now my brother and my sister in love have to comeback and I don't know how is going to be that return. This treatment to disable people is not acceptable for airline that offer their service here in USA. Their advertisement are full of lies and they don't stand for they name.

Your staff have proven to be very polite and respectful in the past and I have always been a satisfied customer.

It is with great pity that I must now come to you via this email and file a formal complaint for which I will seek some kind of compensation, monetary, unlimited flights for me and or my family, in addition to assurance that the harm caused by Avianca staff will not be repeated in the future. It must be that Avianca adds this unnecessary injustice (indicated below) to the training that Avianca workers receive before they are allowed to serve the most valuable asset that Avianca has its customers, which has allowed Avianca to become a great company and grow to the award winning service provider that it is today.

Let me begin by indicating what I do for a living. I am the owner of [ship service company] which provides various services to foreign companies whom have cargo and supply vessels as well as tug boats in Central and South America. It is for this reason that I travel to various parts of Central and South America either by sea or by air. While on a job in Roatan Honduras I was contacted by one of the owners of a supply vessel to travel to Medellin Colombia and pick up Mr. Robert Edward W., and accompany him back to Roatan Honduras. My job was to find the best a securest air line provider that would allow me to deliver Mr. W. to Roatan Honduras with out any trouble. I chose Avianca like I have in the past and here is where I will explain what took place on what day and how it took place and for which I seek some form a gratification or compensation.

On the 21st day of August 2010, Mr. W. and I departed Medellin Colombia for San Pedro Sula Honduras. We would change planes in Bogota to San Salvador and then on to San Pedro Sula Honduras. When we arrived in Bogota we were taken apart and separated from the people of the same flight and asked if we were headed to San Salvador, we said yes and were taken to the ticket counter. The lady that was attending us was what seemed to be nice young well dressed lady. But, as it turned out, looks are deceiving. This young unprofessional lady (whom neglected to give us her name) proceeded to be very, very rude to me and especially to Mr. ***.

The lady asked for our passports and yellow fever shots (yellow booklet that indicates this)she was attending Mr. W. first and was directing her question to him but since Mr. W. does not speak any Spanish I proceeded to help and translated to him the words that for which Mr. W. wanted conveyed to the young Avianca ground crew ticket attendant. When I did this, the young rude lady said that she was not talking to me that she was talking to the old man, at which point I told her that he spoke no English and she made a face that indicated to us disgust. I then asked her if she had had a bad day or been in some kind of trouble just before we got there, that she did not seem okay and her response was total out rage and proceeded to make big show of a bad attitude towards us and for which every one around us did not approve of.

The young attendant told us that we would not be allowed to travel on the Avianca plane because Mr. *** did not have his yellow fever shot. When I translated this to Mr. *** he said, what is she talking about, does she not know any thing, he told me to tell her to take a closer look at his passport and that he was almost 70 years old and did not need a yellow fever shot and that he had flown all over the world and had had no problems before. When I relaid this information to the young lady, she said, there is nothing I can do and if you don't like the way I am handling the situation and feel that some one other than her could provide a better response or service, that we were free to go through the line an wait for another ticket attendant to help us. She then said to me show her my return ticket for which I told her that I did not need a return ticket that I was a sea man and that if she took the time to read the attached letter that she would find out that I was traveling to Roatan to board a vessel.

By this time I had had just about enough of the situation and seeing that we wouldn't lose our flight if I went through the line again, I proceed to look for the Avianca shift supervisor whom after listening to me explain the situation concluded by saying you are correct, Mr. W. does not need a yellow fever shot, I apologize and am sorry that you lost your flight, I will book you on the next flight for the next day 22nd of August 2010 and told us to have a nice day. Mr. W. said to me, I know my rights tell the supervisor that Avianca must provide a Hotel Room and feed us, because it was the company's untrained staff that caused this inconvenience to the both of us. As it turns out, the supervisor filled out a report and found us a Room in the Capital Hotel in Bogota, were we were to have a further problem that I will briefly indicate for the record.

At the Capital Hotel in Bogota, we were given vouchers to present at the restaurant for our meals. When we got there we had not shown our vouchers and were treated very cordially like and with great respect, but once we presented the voucher it was like we were out casts of some sort. We were told that we could not order what we wanted that we could not eat the salad bar that we could drink water or Coke and that it was a different meal for us since it was a deal that they had with Avianca for people that did not make their plane connections on time.

This would be the second time that Mr. W. would be discriminated upon, the first time when the young rude Avianca ticket attendant dis cremated against him by not treating him with the same respect that others were treated and by not respecting the fact that he was a senior citizen which in every country in the world is recognized as a special time in ones lives when one is not the same as when one is young. This is the end of my story and complaint, will be looking forward to hearing from your good office or other wise one of many attorneys that we consult will be contacting Avianca anew, on Mr. W.'s and my behalf.

Mistreatment and and discriminated by badly trained Avianca Ground Crew has caused Mr. W. who is a Senior citizen to lose his job-in Roatan Honduras because the vessel that he was to be the Captain on had left with out him and the company had to hire another captain for the job. This has caused many problems for Me as well now that I will be charged for unnecessary expenses,according to my employer and will unable me to bring my family for vacation in Roatan. This is very devastating to me, because my child is 26 months old and I have been away from him and his mother for many months at a time do to the nature of my work Avianca has to pay for my grief and emotional scars. No money will ever be enough, to correct the Avianca abuse, but there must be an example. Please help!

I made a complaint with Colombia's civil aeronautics. I had to pay another ticket, pay for a hotel, lose a day's work. Avianca in Colombia does not do what you want. I paid JetBlue $540, I paid hotel $200, I paid $50 for meals, $50 taxi and also 2 days work for $600. I feel humiliated. It almost gave me a heart attack.

I still haven't received my suit case nor have they done anything to help me I keep calling them and they keep telling me that they are investigating but thats all. All of my clothing was in these two bags. They said that they contacted the Manager in Colombia but that he hasn't made a decision. It's going to be two months already and I haven't heard back from them and still no suite cases.

I have no clothing ever since I have been unable to travel or go any where due to this. All of my personal belongings were in these two bags.