Bouquets to Avianca

Status
Not open for further replies.

Scarlett

Established Member
Joined
Jun 27, 2011
Posts
1,221
Qantas
LT Gold
Virgin
Platinum
Credit where it's due for Avianca, as there are soooo many foibles that make them an otherwise tedious airline to deal with: I tried to make a regular booking on AV (great deal...more on that later) rather than through Lifemiles, but surprise, surprise, the website was making it difficult for me.

I was trying to book Aus to Colombia return, for the family and I in J and tried all sorts of combinations to try and match an itinerary I was able to create via google flights. I'd been playing around with it for a month, so it wasn't a mistake fare or cached data, I just couldn't get the website to match the prices I could via Google for the right number of pax. Finally, after many attempts (and not even knowing why it finally worked), I managed to get the right airfare to come up using the multi-city tool. But after adding in all the pax data and selecting seats, it coughped out again and threw the error page at me.

My obi-wan Kenobi (final hope) was to take the drastic step of calling Avianca, as I now had it confirmed that the airfare was possible (and the website had let me read the fare rules). So I rang via the UK number and after about a 20 minute wait, got to speak to an operator. He told me that I had two options: book through him for a USD30 pp booking fee, or get transferred to their IT people to see if they could solve why I couldn't complete the booking on the website. The second option sounded highly fanciful, so I tried the first and started feeding him the flight details for the booking. First flight was the AV codeshare for UA870 SYD-SFO, but apparently an agent of AV, CAN'T BOOK a Star Alliance flight on the Avianca codeshare flight number!!! WTF? So I asked around that issue for a while to see if I was just not understanding, and was then about to HUACA but decided to try the IT option.

And this is where it gets good! The IT guy was very helpful and asked for a number of the details of the booking I had been trying to make online. He took things like my name, date of the first flight and my passport number. He then told me it would take a couple of minutes and I assume he constructed a search of data that had been entered into the website. After about three minutes he came back and confirmed he could see the booking I was trying to make and he just needed to set it up in a different screen. That took another couple of minutes and then he read back all of the flights in the multi-city booking I was trying to make and confirmed my families details so I knew he had everything correct. Then it was through to the automated credit card payment system and done. How good is that? They had the details from amongst all of the website data and could reconstruct the booking I was trying to make AND FOR THE SAME PRICE as what was shown on the website!

I was told that as long as the payment went through okay I should expect to receive e-tix via email in about 4-8 hours. Next call was straight to my bank to let them know a credit card transaction was inbound from Colombia for a sizeable sum in USD. And the next morning there were the e-tix in my inbox. Txn is pending on the cc too, so all good thus far.

Thanks Avianca: colour me surprised.
 
The Frequent Flyer Concierge team takes the hard work out of finding reward seat availability. Using their expert knowledge and specialised tools, they'll help you book a great trip that maximises the value for your points.

AFF Supporters can remove this and all advertisements

I should also note that I'd found the fare from a series of google flights searches I'd played around with and it was also eventually published on FT via this post (which interestingly, gained little traction, although the available dates have been drying up, so some people are aware of it): AV/UA: SYD-BOG (free stopovers) from USD 2,595 / A$3,773 - FlyerTalk Forums

Final booking was:
SYD-SFO-LAX (UA/UA and then stopover in LAX)
LAX-BOG (AV to continue to destination - and then some side trips around Central America while there)
MDE-BOG-LAX-SYD (AV/AV/UA - open jaw for commencing the return journey)

~AUD3.8K pp in J.

Now the value here should be blatantly obvious, especially when the J UA SYD-LAX flights alone would go for $6K plus.

I'm crediting to TK. Still working out where to credit the families flights: UA would be useful with miles not expiring in that program, but tempered by dynamic pricing when eventually using those miles. Also considering signing them up for Krisflyer for additional options locally.

And of course I can't select seats now via the AV website as the page won't load... typical.
 
I've only had to ring Av once.Was through the US number.The guy couldn't have been more helpful as well and it was a breeze.
 
Most interesting.

While too early to be definitive, with the WHO declaring coronavirus a 'global emergency', it's possible that fares like this will become even cheaper, and that there'll be many more deals as some (or many) airlines experience marked drops in bookings.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Enhance your AFF viewing experience!!

From just $6 we'll remove all advertisements so that you can enjoy a cleaner and uninterupted viewing experience.

And you'll be supporting us so that we can continue to provide this valuable resource :)


Sample AFF with no advertisements? More..

Recent Posts

Back
Top