Avianca Reviews 1,801

I am beyond frustrated with Avianca. My original flight for Saturday, August 9th was suddenly changed just three days before departure—with no reasonable alternatives offered. The only option was to accept a new flight on Friday, August 8th, forcing me to miss an entire day of work. I had no choice but to accept this change, only to have Avianca change the return flight AGAIN, this time from Sunday, August 17th to Tuesday, August 19th. That was completely unworkable for my entire family—we simply couldn't miss more days of work.

As a result, I had to cancel the whole trip. And what does Avianca do? They still charge me $500 in cancellation fees—for a flight they disrupted! It gets worse: with such short notice, I had to rebook flights for the entire family at the last minute, costing me over $2000 more. That’s a total unexpected expense of $2500—completely out of pocket—because Avianca unilaterally canceled and reshuffled our itinerary at the last minute.
This whole experience has been a nightmare. Avianca’s complete lack of consideration for its passengers has deeply impacted my family—financially and emotionally. Do not fly economy with Avianca to Bogotá. It’s just not worth the stress, the money, or the chaos.

Flight delayed by half an hour, so I loose the connection, which is still at the gate, but they deny boarding. They make me wait 13 hours for another flight, even with an expensive flex ticket unable to book me on an earlier, and only give me 4 meal vouchers of 35000 COP (8,49 USD). That doesn’t feed you at airport prices.

so i booked my flight at like 8:45pm, but then i decided i'd rather fly back on wednesday instead of thursday. every airline lets you cancel/change flights within 24 hours, so i'm like ok i'll just change it. so i go online but the website says you have to call in to make changes. so i call in, and their Philippines help desk answers and after getting transferred around a bunch it's after 9pm. then the lady says "sorry, the change department closes at 9pm so you can no longer change the flight."

i'm like "but i just booked it 10 minutes ago"

and she says "that is our policy, you can only change until 9pm on the same day"

and i say "that policy doesn't make sense otherwise i would have waited until after 9pm to book it"

then she says "we can submit a request to our billing department to maybe refund it for you, but it will take 7 days, or you can pay $150 to change your flight"

This company is a whole scam and extortion operation, I will never be booking flights through Avianca or Lifemiles ever again.

Price for a suitcase and to pick your seats are extortionate.
Food was nice. Seats not the most comfortable.
For check in - was in the queue before the hour mark to boarding but by the time we got seen, it was 4 minutes under the hour (56 minutes until boarding). They refused to check in our bag and said the bag can't be sent on another flight without someone the bag belongs to, so tried to charge us a high penalty fee to go on the next flight 24 hours later. Terrible experience with this as they were not understanding at all that we were waiting in a queue to be seen to.

Uncomfortable seats, no decent food options available for purchase, and not even free water offered to passengers. On top of that, hidden fees significantly increase the final cost, making it more expensive than other airlines that actually include better services. I will never fly with this terrible airline again.

Unable to book seats on an existing reservation on the app and on their website. They avoid assisting their customers and to get help with a human being is impossible. Once you are able to get a rep instead of offering help their pitch is “what do you want to buy”. Then after I provided my reservation code and number starts the roundaround of stupid questions. A simple task of asigning seats is an FBI interrogation (???). When I requested to talk to a supervisor, I was told to contact them by phone. I requested a line number they gave me a weblink. Then I received an email stating “matter resolved”, when I am still in limbo.

Trash airline, poor customer sevice. A lot flight changes unexpectedly on the day of the flight

Cancelled my flight and merged it with a later departure same day meaning a +4 hour delay. The later flight was only half full so I assume they cancelled my flight to save money. They didn't reimburse me for my missing connection departure which incurred me a loss. As a consumer you have no rights or protection like you, for example, have in Europe.

Avianca has gone from bad to worse, and I will definitely not make the mistake of flying with this airline ever again. I recently flew 3 destinations of which on two of them, and even though all the tickets were purchased with enough anticipation, I wasn't assigned a seat until the last minute when most people had already boarded the planes and only after they managed to leave people behind by paying them $$$. This is offensive towards customers as it creates undue stress and worry.
If this was not all, I also made the mistake of purchasing an Avianca ticket for an 88 year-old person (my mom) visiting me on a longish flight of more than 6 hours, and she couldn't even get a glass of water on that flight as even water on board has to be purchased. She tried to buy a bottle but couldn't because the only method of payment allowed is credit or debit card, and of course most 88 year-olds do not handle or carry plastic.
Absolutely no respect for passengers on this airline.

If I could rate it with a zero I would. . Poor service , no food at all on the seven hour flight,, they even charge for water,, , very small, leg room, and they charge for carry-on. The worst airline I can think of!

What a nightmare of an airline. Just trying to obtain our senior discount was exhausting. The so called 'help' center was no help at all. We were told that as USA citizens, with Ecuadorian permanent residency status and Cedulas ( government ID's) that we were not eligible for senior discounts. We were told that we could only get a discount as Ecuadorian nationals. Absolutely incorrect. Avianca needs to enlighten their employees. Thankfully we are now booking our trip with a more reputable airline.

I missed a connection in San Salvador. They wanted to put me on a flight 24 hours later. But I had a transfer to catch at my final destination in Panama. I offered to pay money to get on a flight later that day. They refused. When I took that flight anyway, they canceled my ticket, including my return flight. So I needed to buy two additional tickets at last-minute inflated prices to ensure I didn't miss my tour group. Avianca now goes on my no-fly list with Frontier and Aeroflot.

Has to be the worse airline in the world by far in every-way. Avoid it at all cost!

They first canceled my luggage, afterwards my connecting flight without informing me. I had to buy a second ticket with another airline and they refused to give me my money back. Horrible experience that cost me 1000.000 pesos colmbianos (260 usd) and resulted in nothing.

Such a poor service they should be allowed in The UK!

The aircraft crew were in a very long break all the staff at the same time while we were left for nearly two hours with the dinners plates on our lap being mid night when we needed a real rest.

Staff very unkind and forcing us to seat with very bad manners.

My luggage was opened at the BOGOTA airport and it was an avianca leaflet saying thank you for your cooperation. They broke my locks and now no one is responsible.

I traveled FLL to La Paz and back to FLL. As international flights, the services were way too poor. Knowledge of the ground crews at the check-in counter in FLL in Hollywood, Florida, USA was terribly lower. At the check-in line, a supervisor wanted to see a scannable barcode. I told him that I couldn't check in via your website, so there were no scannable barcodes- but the supervisor at the counter gate insisted I do it online on the spot again and get a scannable bar code. After telling him repeatedly - your website wasn't allowing me to do so because I am a USA citizen, so I needed to do the check-in process at the counter. The supervisor said it would cost me $20 per passenger (we were 2 passengers). I knew it was an absurd charge but agreed to pay just to cross him and got to the counter agent. At the counter, the lady agent refused to issue my boarding pass. I told her that I would get a visa on arrival at La Paz, Bolivia airport. She didn't agree to that, got a supervisor and the supervisor also told her that we needed a visa before flying. I consulted the Bolivian consulate in USA, and it was clearly written there that Bolivia issue visas on arrival at the entry port. The agent finally did her own research online and found that I was correct and finally issued boarding passes. There was no $20 per-person service fee charged.

Onboard services were below the lowest standard of any international flight. Cold and rude flight crews, no pillows, no blankets, no food. Even the passengers were not offered a cup of free water. Seats were uncomfortable, non-reclining with the narrow legroom.

Their web site is not functional, when you are able to reach a human being via the 1-800 number they want to charge you to do a task that you are unable to do it online. I sent an email to "help" and they responded to contact the Contact Center on line after I wrote them that the web site did not have a field for my purpose and that the interface was not functional. I contacted them via email at servicioavianca no response. During the last week I spent a lot time trying to contact them about my reservation to no avail.They really do a great job to avoid asisting their passengers!

Avianca has been the worst experience. I’ve been trying to reach their customer service for over a week, but I keep getting redirected to their WhatsApp chat, which doesn’t work. There’s no way to speak with a real person—I haven’t been able to get any help at all.

Cannot stress enough how terrible the service is for Avianca. They have terrible check-in processes and the ground staff are incredibly slow to do their jobs. They also don't equip infant oxygen masks at every seat on the plane, making them split up families.

Incompetent airline. My flight got cancelled and no solutuon was offered. I booked a flight from Avianca, but they managing it from Iberia. Therefore, I found myself lost between Avianca, which they keep on putting all responsibilities to Iberia, not providing me any solution or assitance.