Flying On A Wing And A Prayer

Tomorrow I am traveling to Spain, and I am very happy it is not with the national airline, Iberia. The best two airlines I have used for this trip have been British Airways and Cathay Pacific. In both cases the punctuality, efficiency at the airport, and the levels of comfort and service were excellent. This is a lot more than I can say for Iberia.

At Madrid Barajas Airport where Iberia is based you can never be certain of which gate you will be departing from, because Iberia has a nasty habit of changing the gate number at the very last minute. This involves a mad dash with cabin bags down the terminal from one end to the other. Fifteen minutes later you finally arrive at the new gate all of a fluster and sweating cobs. And beware, that new gate may well change again. I think Iberia is running its very own passenger fitness-to-fly program.

On one occasion flying with Iberia, I arrived at Madrid from Seville, where I lived, on an Iberian plane, and had to run a kilometer all bagged up only to find that the plane to Japan had already left without me. I was pretty darn furious as that meant that changes in plans in Japan would have to be made, and not without a good deal of inconvenience and cost.

Iberia put me up at a local hotel and paid for my evening meal and breakfast. In addition, the European Civil Aviation Authority introduced a law saying that I had to be financially compensated to the tune of about 600 euros and be provided with a new flight the next day. Did I get paid the compensation I was entitled to? Read on and find out.

Iberia has ways of avoiding having to pay that compensation. First off, the airline knows that such claims have time limits. So they do things to delay the process until the claim times out. In my case, after I sent my application for compensation to Iberia, they took an inordinate amount of time to respond. To make matters worse, they deliberately misstated the details back to me, quoting a totally different original flight into Madrid, which was the plane that was delayed and made me miss my connection to Japan. That malicious, intentional change of detail had the effect of prolonging a further delay as I then had to contact them again to correct the details. By the time that was resolved, the claim had timed out. Did I get the money? Did I hell.

Another time travelling with Iberia I paid for a seat with extra legroom. I was appalled when I boarded the plane only to discover that they had given my seat to somebody else and allocated me a seat in the middle of a team of physically enormous Japanese sumo wrestlers. When they threatened to throw me off the plane for complaining I had to accept the seat they gave me and spend twelve hours cramped by sumos to the left and right of me. I could barely flex a muscle.

When the time came to return to Spain, at the airport in Japan, I was told I could pay extra for a seat I had already paid extra for back in Spain. They didn't want to know about it. Because I refused to pay twice I ended up having to sit yet again in an uncomfortable seat without any extra legroom. However, that is not the depth of how far Iberia will go in their dirty tricks department, oh no.

A few years ago I had two Argentinian friends, a married couple, living in Spain. The female's parents decided to pay a visit, flying all the way from Argentina to Spain for a long three-week stay. Sadly the woman's father passed away dozing on the sofa. The poor man's body was cremated and his remains were given to my friend in an urn.

My friend contacted Iberia to tell them that her father had tragically passed away and asked if she could change the details of his return flight into her name, to save her elderly mother traveling all the way back to Argentina with an ash-filled urn, devastated and all alone. Did Iberia respond with compassion? Ha!

My friend was told that her father's seat was being canceled but that she could buy the same seat as a new passenger, paying the full cost for a journey that had already been paid for by her deceased father!

I do not know what you think, but I think it is an absolute disgrace to take advantage of a customer's tragic plight in such an insensitive, unfeeling money-grabbing manner. And it is for the above reasons I do my very best to avoid flying with Iberia.

This time I am flying with an excellent Middle East airline and I hear only good things about them. Here's hoping.