Aer Lingus

✅ Trip Verified | Seattle to Birmingham via Dublin . I booked a three-segment flight to Birmingham, UK, following the route SLC to SEA, SEA to DUB, DUB to BHX. The first segment was an Alaskan Airlines codeshare. I go to the Alaska Airlines counter at Salt Lake and check-in, as I could not check-in online due to the international segments. They check my luggage through to Birmingham, and tell me to print off my Aer Lingus boarding passes in Seattle. No big deal, I think. That's not an uncommon issue with codeshares. I land at Seattle, 6 hours in advance of my next flight's departure. I exit security and make my way to the Aer Lingus ticket counter. Which, as it turns out, isn't staffed. No problem! I think (foolishly). I'll just check in at a kiosk. Oddly enough, kiosk returns "Flight is not open for check-in." Okay, fine I go to check-in online. But my record locator isn't working, so I call customer service. I inform them I can't print my boarding passes. They give me a record locator and tell me to try checking in online. I try, and the "Reprint boarding passes" button is greyed out. Let's try the mobile app - nope, "No issuing boarding passes" error is returned. I call customer service again. Unapologetically, they tell me to just wait until they start staffing their single ticket counter at Seattle. They also tell me to try calling my travel agency (AmEx Global Travel, in this case, who I'd booked through). I call AmEx. They apologetically explain that they don't even have an agency dial-in to Aer Lingus; they can call Aer Lingus but will get the same runaround as I did. The AmEx agents are always good people. Fine. I decide to chat with an Alaskan rep, who is friendly and tells me "Yeah, Aer Lingus has a tendency to annoy a lot of travelers with their customer service approach." This is 2019. "Printing boarding passes" is sort of a fundamental thing. The second rep I talked to on the phone told me "We're going paperless," which would be great if literally any of their IT toolkits worked properly. The agents didn't know when the kiosks would be available for check-in. Nor could agents release the flight for me to check in again, or authorize re-fetching my boarding passes, or email them to me, or send them via SMS, or authorize their access with their mobile app. If you look at Google Reviews, you'll see that Aer Lingus has a well-deserved 1.2 stars out of 5 at SEATAC. I won't fly Aer Lingus again. Basic customer service can't and shouldn't really be ignored - due to them, I spent 3 hours sitting outside the security zone at SEATAC because none of their agents were either trained or had permission to actually distribute boarding passes. This is senseless, and moreover *easily corrected.* This is not complex work, and not something any other transatlantic carrier operating in North America has issues with. 0/10. Failures happen. I'm not going to judge an airline by its errors, but by how it attempts to remedy them, which in this case, appears to be a determined course of calculated indifference.

✅ Trip Verified | I travelled from Toronto to Barcelona via Dublin. The flight was delayed in Toronto for an hour, when I got to Dublin i have to run to catch my connecting flight to Barcelona, when i reached the gate it was boarding already. I waited for my luggage for an hour, I approached the airport personnel who’s responsible for the lost luggage and was told to wait as they are still unloading. I waited patiently for more than 30 mins, my luggage never arrived. I was the only one waiting and the ground personnel left the office without checking if i got my luggage or not. The information desk at the airport made several phone call for the guy to comeback to assist me with my lost luggage. It took him more than 30 mins to comeback, he did the processing for the lost luggage and I was told that I was going to get an email but never did. Customer service was useless, I had to call more 10 times and used up all my minutes. The customer service are giving me different information every time I call. They even until my told me that my bag was delivered already but it was a lie. They told me they call me but never did no help or whatsoever. After 35 hours my luggage was finally delivered and to my surprise my luggage was damaged. My sister submitted a claim on my behalf (due to the time difference & international calling fees) and the only reply was for me to look for a repair shop which is impossible. First, it beyond repairable. Second, my itinerary is so hectic. I asked my sister email/phone again and until now no response. Losing & damaging my luggage & my struggle with customer service is ruining my trip.

✅ Trip Verified | Dublin to London. I guess this applies to most airlines and not just Aer Lingus. I arrived at the airport early because I had a meeting cancelled. I saw there was a flight to LHR leaving an hour earlier than my flight to LHR. I went to the gate and asked if I could get on this earlier flight and they said no sorry it is full. So I went across the way and bought a snack. I then heard them paging five passengers for the flight as it was closing. I went up and asked again about getting on this flight and the person said it is not his call and pointed at another person who just looked at me and continued what he was doing. I left again and they then paged twice more for the missing passengers. I then went up again and asked if I could get on this flight as these missing passengers will likely want my seat on the later flight. He looked at me and said he cannot as he closed the flight five minutes ago. I said do you would rather have it go with a few empty seats? He said I can’t do anything I closed it already. It really baffles me why an airline would not do everything it can to go full and to have had an extra seat for these missing passengers who would likely need it. Not to mention the carbon footprint of not having a full plane. It seems that people at the gate were empowered to act for the best and now they just tick the boxes and don’t care about it look at the bigger picture. Rather sad.

✅ Trip Verified | Toronto to London via Dublin. Tried to change my ticket the morning before my flight (added an extra 3 hours of layover). I managed to change it back thankfully. Delayed on the runway for an hour in Dublin, lost my checked bags. Customer service was useless, I had to call in 2 or 3 times a day until my bags were returned to have them fix the descriptions of the missing bags (completely lacked any form of common sense - listed all my bags as golf bag at one point?). Finally delivered all my bags three days later, and broke my expensive hiking backpack. I submitted my receipts a month ago and I have heard nothing from customer service about my reimbursement for interim expenses & backpack repairs (have ignored four emails now, I've only been able to make one phone call due to the time difference & international calling fees) Losing all my luggage & struggling with customer service to get it back completely ruined my trip. With so much of my gear & hiking bag missing, I wasn't able to do most of the excursions I had planned, and had to spend a good deal of time waiting around for my bags to be delivered. I understand that everyone is human, and mistakes happen during busy travel seasons, but this is over the top. I asked for the fee I paid to check my bag back (as well as reimbursement for the perishable goods that expired while my bags were missing), and they declined that as well as any other remedial gesture for their lack of competency. I went with Aer Lingus because the ticket was a little less expensive, and I don't mind a layover, but I know to never fly with this airline. It's not worth the $50 saved. Total mess.

Not Verified | Dublin to San Francisco. Cleared U.S Customs in Dublin, the plane was boarded in seat rows which was a bit of an inconvenience but luckily we were round row 15. After boarding, we spent another 40-60 minutes waiting for something. I was already a quarter through Toy Story 4! You were provided with a small comfy pillow, a blanket and a set of earphones. When we were airborne. An hour or two later, lunch came. Chicken, beef or a veggie option. I am not sure what the veggie option was but I think the beef was some meatballs. The Chicken which I had was this mushroom and chicken lasagna? Let’s just say I didn’t eat it. Down to preference though. There were some nice movie and TV selections. The screens were big too. The main problem was that after you had flown over Greenland, they forced you to put your window down so others could sleep. Now, we took off at around 11:30 AM in Dublin. This was around 13:00. After an hour of this, everybody was wide awake and it felt unnecessary. People would lift it up for a minute to look at the scenery so clearly people wanted to look outside. Fast forward a few hours, we are about one hour away. They serve this interesting pastry which I'm not sure what it was. It was okay. We were finally allowed to open the window blind when we started our descent. But apart from that, it was a good flight.

Not Verified | London to Belfast City. A smooth journey with Aer Lingus both ways. Check-in and boarding expertly handled and swift. Both flights on time (on the way back we arrived ahead of schedule). Cabin crew were friendly, professional and nothing was too much. I have been travelling to and from Northern Ireland for nearly 25 years now and have never had a problem with Aer Lingus. Long may it continue.

Not Verified | Dublin to Izmir. Spent two hours queuing to check in. Staff at the check in desks were extremely slow and gave no apologies to anyone for the two hour queuing times. The check in staff seemed to be on a go slow and speed was beyond their ability. We all experienced this type of long waits, ten years ago not in 2019. It is embarrassing to see that an Irish company, such as Aer Lingus has not upskilled their staff in many years. We will now try and avoid flying with Aer Lingus.

✅ Trip Verified | Overall a passenger experience you would expect from a cheap budget airline. Staff at checkin and onboard generally procedure-focused, ‘must do this’, ‘cannot do that’. Several times I experienced outright unfriendly behaviour, but as you don’t want to be denied access, you’re better off accepting it, is my sense with them. Seat space on board very limited, drinks and food only offered for sale. Every time I fly Aer Lingus, I realise that you don’t fly Aer Lingus for any other reason than when you have no feasible alternative.

✅ Trip Verified | This flight was a last-minute Thomas Cook caused replacement, therefore an expensive long flight from Dublin to Los Angeles. In the air, I discovered the headphone jack was the two-plug type and therefore could not be used with my 3.5 mm headphones with no adapter available, instead we were given headphones much like those sold in the dollar store. The second problem was that one of the two seat sockets was not working. So not only was the sound quality poor, I was only getting it through one ear. I called it to the attention of the flight attendant who checked and found that there were no other two seats together for me and my companion. So, in response to my 10-hour problem, she said, "I can give you a free drink..." Problem solved?

✅ Trip Verified | On 3rd October Aer Lingus cancelled my flight from Dublin to Verona (I discovered it at the airport since they sent a cancellation email less than 2 hrs before the flight). They said that it was because of the storm Lorenzo but I'm sure it was just an excuse. How is it possible that all the other flights that were going to Milan, Bologna, Venice etc., that are not far away as the cow flies from Verona, departed without any issue and mine didn't? Aer Lingus just didn't want to spend money for a flight with only 40 passengers so they cancelled it and, luckily for them, they also had the perfect excuse that day, the storm. I was supposed to fly out at 12.55 pm and instead I flew to Milan Malpensa at 07.30 pm because also that flight had an hour delay, and in Milan we arrived to Verona airport at 02.30 am by a coach organised by an Aer Lingus representative. After that I had an additional hour to reach my home. I arrived home at 03.30 am after I had been waiting at Dublin airport since 11.00 am of the previous day. A trip that should have lasted maximum 8 hours took actually 17.5 hours and bevause of that I got sick during my holidays and now I'm back at work still sick. I have filled out their form to receive a compensation for this awful experience and they denied it! And in the email they also expect me to book with them again? I hope they are kidding! Their company and their behavior is just disgraceful, I'm never ever going to book with them in my life again.