NYC–Bogota–Pereira roundtrip and it was honestly one of the worst travel experiences I’ve ever had. Even before the trip started they “canceled” my first flight and moved me a full day later, even though my friend still flew the original flight. Classic overbooking dodge. You either accept the change or take a refund and if you accept, you basically waive any compensation.
Then a whole saga with trying to refund a seat fee turned into Avianca treating it like I requested a full trip refund. That froze my ticket for days until they rejected the refund I never wanted in the first place.
But the real disaster was on the way home. Pereira flight delayed nearly two hours, and they refused to tag my bag through to NYC because the segments were on separate tickets. Got into Bogota late, remote stand, bus, baggage claim, re-check, security… of course we missed the NYC flight. Then we spent three hours in line just to get blamed for missing it because “separate bookings aren’t connections.”
They waitlisted us for the 11pm flight, but it was so overbooked that even after 10 volunteers gave up their seats, 14 of us still got bumped. Avianca kept insisting it wasn’t their fault, even though the only reason any of this happened was the initial delay. No compensation offered at any point unless you begged and even then it felt like they were doing us a massive favor just giving a hotel.
We finally got out the next day, after being told at 2am we were “lucky” to get anything at all. Extra security screening on top of that because someone left a “note” on our reservation. Just insult to injury.
If anyone knows how to escalate beyond Avianca’s useless complaint form, I’d love advice. The whole thing left me exhausted and honestly shocked at how badly and rudely we were treated.
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