Aerolineas Argentinas

I have travelled several times with Aerolineas. Buenos Aires-Rio De Janeiro and Montevideo. Domestically I have flown between Buenos Aires and Mendoza Cordoba and Salta. I only have praise for the staff and organisation of this airline. I have encountered polite efficiency from check in staff and air crew the aircraft were clean and I experienced no delay or problems with the flights.

This is by far the worst airline. Rude staff most dilapidated aircraft and 13 hours late - need I go on. Cheap rates but not cheap enough.

During our holiday in Argentina we were unlucky to have several flights with Aerolineas Argentinas. They are by far the worst airline I have experienced. It is a very poorly run state owned airline acting like a monopolist. Customers are treated like dirt. Staff at check in is rude (Puerto Iguazu was the only exception). Flights are nearly always delayed without any explanation given or sometimes cancelled altogether. Even worse some of its planes are in very poor condition and seem utterly unsafe. Follow the advice of some Argentinians I met : always avoid them. It is better to spend 24 hours in a bus (they are very comfortable) than 2 hours with Aerolineas.

The food was basic but acceptable. Astonished by rudeness of the cabin crew no service at all we were not greeted on the aircraft or off. Crew ignored our need for a glass of water my seat was broken no film or music for a 4 hour flight.

AEP to Calafate Calafate to Ushuaia: Ushuaia to AEP. I was surprised at the overall quality of the Aerolineas Argentinas operations : online check-in inflight service from friendly and professional crew and the snacks including the quick Calafate to Ushuaia hop. The radar went down at Ushuaia and AR sent three bus loads of passengers on a four hour bus ride to Rio Grande through a heavy mountain snow. As the buses arrived in Rio Grande the Aerolineas Argentinas flight landed and a completely full flight was airborne for AEP in less than an hour.

We spent 4 weeks in Argentina and took 5 flights with is airline. In this time they lost my baggage for two days cancelled one flight with no previous notice delayed two times and worst of all the last airplane we took tried to depart and stop last minute twice due to technical difficulties. We had to wait for 24 hrs for them to fix it and lost our connections to Mexico. The company refused to assist us to solve any problem and kept saying : there's nothing we can do present your claim on line. I will never flight with Aerolíneas Argentinas again!

Aeroparque-Montevideo return 4 people at the check-in 2 of them working. The rest doing everything to avoid the customer. Although arriving 2h before departure we almost missed our flight. The queue became so long that locals started fighting with the personnel since they lost their flights due to Aerolineas Argentinas "I dont care attitude". Service onboard is a plastic bag with juice and a fruit-bar. Flight attendants friendly. A country like Argentina does deserve a better airline.

EZE to Santa Cruz. Everything was fine - no queue to check in flight was on time decent snack on board and aircraft reasonably new. So nothing special but nothing to complain about either.

Flight suspended in Aukland for 24hrs due to an industrial dispute (they told us it was due to an engineering issue but we found out later this was a lie). Although we were put up in a hotel room it still lost us one day out of 10 of our hard saved visit to relatives. Waited in Auckland airport for 8 hrs before they ferried us out to hotel - dinner at 3am and had to be awake by 8 to go again (we had kids with us). Flight home was delayed again at Argentina (captain turned up 2 hours late).

MAD-EZE return. On the upper deck on the way to Argentina: service was good food as well - seat worked and slept nearly the whole flight. On the way back on the much smaller lower deck flight attendant was somewhat short-sighted and set everyone in wrong seats - we had our laughs. Seat was a bit broken but found some sleep. Food wasn't so good on the flight back to Europe.