When deciding on an airline or flight package, it's important to keep in mind that the airline you choose is most definitely more important than the price you pay for your flight. This might be obvious to some, but I don't know if most realize exactly how dependent you are on your airline when you are abroad.
For instance, when I was in France last year with my girlfriend, a couple days before our return flight, the airline sent us an email informing us of a flight change. We thought there wasn't much to it, just a slight rescheduling or whatever, so we went ahead and called them since the email was bereft of any further details.
What ensued thereafter was an unnecessarily stressful end to our vacation,
replete with confusing French phone cards, frustrating customer service calls, and constant arguing between us and the airline.
Thankfully, Skype eventually saved us further hassles with phone cards and far-away payphones, allowing us to get the airline on the phone and finally find out what was going on.
So, what happened? The airline had apparently closed down during our vacation. Therefore, all their flights were canceled. I call BS on it now seeing as they're still around, but they basically told us was that we were stranded and they couldn't help us any further. If we wanted to fly back, we'd need to buy another flight. Which we did.
We bought a separate flight to London to make our originally planned connection to New York, where we confronted a representative of the airline. Once we had them face to face, they finally did something right and put us on a Virgin Atlantic flight free of charge, which turned out to be the most luxurious airline either of us have ever flown with. Even though it was coach, it was the polar opposite of the original flight
from New York on our booking airline.
Moral of the story is, never,
ever fly with Air India. No matter how cheap the flight is.
Do you pay up for higher-rated airlines when flying? Or do you always go for the more economically feasible options, regardless of consumer rating?
Comments (4)
Did you take Air India? sorry I may have missed it in your message. For me when I travel for business trips, I usually take Singapore Airlines because that's our Company designated airline. But if I travel for personal, I would look out for the cheapest airline. No choice, every cent counts!
You are right, some airlines would ahve delay so bad and might stop you from transitting to next flight.
My parents go for the cheaper airlines, and rightfully so since they have to pay for an entire family, but I will never again.
The last time I flew, I was stuck in the airport overnight, because the airlines had trouble getting a plane. WTF. Never again
We had a change of flight in the United Kingdom, the company wrote to us explaining the change, we did not have to go to another airport, it just that for the flight out we have to go to Manchester to Newcastle to dropped of passgers and pick up the ones who were on the same flight as us to Bulgaria
On the way back we had to land in Southampton for the same reasons.