Avianca Brazil

✅ Trip Verified | Rio de Janeiro to Sao Paulo. Had worst and most stressful experience with this airline. Bought tickets back in November 2018. Then a few times received email about changing flight times. Ok I understand it happens. So turning up at the airport looked on the screen and couldn't seen my flight. Went to customer desk and been told my flight is cancelled! Couldn't believe what I heard as didn't receive email or text about cancellation. Been told get a taxi /pay myself as they don't provide transfers/and rush to another airport and my flight is due in next 2 hours. Stuck in traffic and it was so frustrating I gonna make to this flight too as I had bag to check in too. Luckily came to airport 1h before flight. This airline should be bankrupt long time ago as no customer care at all and they just put they problems on your shoulders!

✅ Trip Verified | Be prepared that you'll be rejected to check-in on the counter without any reasons. They said, that agent had an issue with booking, but it can't be true because couple of months before flight I had a chat with support about buying luggage and they didn't mention any problems with registration. As pointed in other reviews the problems in this airport hard to solve as it doesn't have Wi-Fi and airline staff didn't offer any help. So I was forced to buy new tickets 4 times more expensive than initially.

✅ Trip Verified | Foz de Iguaçu to Rio de Janeiro. After my experience of this airline, it is unsurprising that it is on the verge of bankruptcy. There was an issue over whether we had paid for hold baggage; the picture suggests that we did but, after detailed investigation, it does look as if we did not. However, the staff were incompetent beyond belief: the so-called manager insisted on some sort of number as part of the evidence that we had paid for bags but the airport had no Wifi and we had problems using 3G/4G data. At no point did anybody suggest that we could pay for the luggage and sort out the problem afterwards, something I would have been happy to do. If I had not taken the initiative in suggesting this, we would have missed our flight. One of this "manager's" charmless colleagues had the cheek to castigate us for not being able to speak Portuguese at an international airport check-in! Between us, we speak English, Spanish and French but it was apparently OUR fault that the Brazilian education system is woefully inadequate when it comes to foreign languages. Once on board, 30 minutes after take-off, the trolley finally made an appearance. Unbelievably, on a two hour flight, the choice of food and beverages on offer were zero and still water respectively.

✅ Trip Verified | Avianca Brasil is on Chapt11. Due to fly Sao Paulo to Rio de Janeiro on Monday, connecting from ZRH, they cancelled my flight on their website, but not on AMADEUS. However on Sunday, I succeed in proceeding to web check-in. Slightly stressed, I arrived in GRU, where I had to check my luggage for domestic flight. Counter was more than unpleasant. My Gold status was not recognized, luggage was not tagged with priority sticker, neither any info given about lounge. I was bothering. On the opposite flight crew was extremely kind. Everything went smoothly and on-time. I discovered later that employees wages have not been paid.

✅ Trip Verified | Rio de Janeiro to Salvador. At checkin, my Star Alliance Gold privileges were fully recognized. Boarding was smooth and departure 30 mn late. Food on board extremely limited, but at least free, and served with smiles ! Brand new and clean aircraft. Unfortunately price (>300 US$ vc 65 Usually) was extremely high as the airline took literally profit of year-end demand.

✅ Trip Verified | Sao Paulo to Lima. Friendly and efficient check in process in Sao Paulo. The lounge they offer on Terminal 2 is unfortunately not really great, they have no own lounge and you use the GOL lounge which is really an underwhelming experience, terrible food, old and dated interior, not very friendly staff. Boarding was efficient, staff on board friendly. Food was nothing special. Great was the views from the aircraft! The aircraft is relatively old and dated, but the seats are ok for a 4-5 hour flight (not fully flat).

✅ Trip Verified | Curitiba to Los Angeles via Sao Paulo. Avianca Brazil is horrible! On July 31 I flew from Curitiba, Brasil to Los Angeles, USA. Both of my bags were lost for a week, the customer service was useless, I was told that my bag was coming on Alaska Airlines, when I called them they had no record, but were nice enough to look up my bags on their tracking. I learned that my bags were separated but none were on their way to me. 6 days after this ordeal, my bags were supposedly on the way, but when the representative called to confirm my address she left a number that didn't work. I finally got in touch with the customer service who told me to just wait until they called back. When I asked to speak to the manager, they said only if I would speak Spanish. I said no problem, and then they hung up on me. At this point I am not holding out hope that I will get my bags back, much less before my 10 day vacation is over. I have never had such a horrible experience in my life, but after reading the reviews, I am not surprised.

✅ Trip Verified | Bogota to Fortaleza. Beware of this airline. It's not associated in any way to Avianca nor the Star Aliance. I had a flight from Miami to Bogotá before the flight to Fortaleza and Avianca didn't allow me to check my bags all the way to Fortaleza. They told me that Avianca Brazil is an independent company. After arriving to Bogotá I had to pay for the service to watch my bags for some hours at the Bogota Airport. Then I had to re-check my bags. They charged me for the second bag. At the return flight my bag was left at the Bogotá Airport cause I haven't had enough time to get out of immigration and re-check it. Now I have to find a cargo company to bring my bag back to Miami. And I didn't receive my Life miles from Avianca Brazil.

✅ Trip Verified | Rio de Janiero to Curitiba via Sao Paulo. Really good experience, really smooth, in-flight entertainment and free food and drink, the cabin crew were really friendly. This really beats European customer service. the leg room is still the same but just the service outweighs it for me

✅ Trip Verified | We flew on 11th November from Iguazzu to Rio de Janeiro with Avianca Brazil where we had the worse experience ever. Initially the flight was delayed by one hour but eventually it turned out to be a flight delay of 8 hours and 10 mins, the initial take off time was 11.30 which then turned out to be 7.40pm. This was made worse by a number of issues at the airport and poor staff customer services: Poor communications and updates, no reason given and no idea of when the next flight. It turns out that the plane for that flight was re-directed to do a different route. Staff either refused to communicate or did not know what was going on - keep saying we were going to leave in an hour or 90 mins and it turned out to be 8 hours. we then waited for the crew to come on a later flight that evening to man a plane that was already there to take us back. Inadequate compensation -lunch only provided but vouchers handed out after 4 hours. This was generally poorly organised with long queues from check in desk rather than a different area- this mean people checking in where queuing with those waiting for their vouchers delaying the whole process. Planning to fly a further 7 flights in January and this has been a very bad experience. Poor boarding procedures on flight at 7.40pm.