Originally posted on LinkedIn
I flew with avianca today. Every single customer touchpoint went wrong ❌
The worst airline in the country? Sad but I think yes.
Context — Cartagena to Bogotá, noon flight. We were 6 people including my 2 four-year-old twins. We already had check-in done, 6 seats selected, paid for.
❌ Step 1, the check-in kiosk. We needed to print the luggage stickers. We showed as checked in, but it couldn’t print the stickers or the boarding passes. Queue.
❌ Step 2, the counter. We hand over documents — surprise, the seats don’t show as paid. The payment receipt doesn’t appear. They show as reserved but not paid (never mind that you CAN’T reserve them without paying!!). 25 minutes. Nothing they can do — we’re put on “standby” (random seat assignment). They print boarding passes… with the exact same seats we had originally booked 🤣
❌ Step 3, boarding. They look at our passes. “You know they moved the kids’ seats, right?” My 4-year-old kids 🙈 Apparently the system randomly assigned my kids to the same row the system let me buy — which was an emergency exit row. Which they can’t sit in. Why did it let me buy those seats for them? Why assign them there? Why reassign them (ALONE!) in the 30 minutes it took us to reach boarding and not before?
10 minutes to sort it out. They ask other passengers in row 32 (the last row) if they’d swap with my wife and me (we were in row 14) so we could sit with the kids.
⚠️ Side story 1: Those passengers were actually supposed to fly yesterday with their family but were “asked the favor” to stay and fly today, were put up in a terrible hotel, AND had their seats downgraded from row 9 to row 32. We swapped — us to 32, them to 14.
❌ Step 4, boarding 2.0. We go to walk onto the plane. They don’t know if we should go left or right. They argue for 2 minutes. Send us left. Someone reading the barcode on the passes. The scanner is broken. They try for 5 minutes, doesn’t work. End up taking a picture with someone’s phone.
❌ Step 5, sitting down. We get to row 32 (turns out it was 2 in row 32 and 2 in row 31, each with a kid). Row 32 has no window (that’s why we picked our seats!) and the kids are already upset. But worse — in row 31 they put my son and me on opposite sides of the aisle. WTF?? So please hold on, kid on my lap in a seat where my legs don’t fit for 20 minutes while everyone else boards.
⚠️ Side story 2: The other passengers in row 32 also got moved. FROM ROW 2 TO ROW 32. No explanation. “You were reaccommodated, deal with it.” With check-in, payment, everything — doesn’t matter, reaccommodated.
Avianca needs to wake up. They have the worst customer experience imaginable. Worse than a low-cost carrier, at full-price fares, with systemic failures at every customer interaction. And they don’t even give you a glass of water. At every single step, someone was complaining about something that went wrong for them.
It’s incredible how far they’ve fallen.