Old reputations die
hard
Argentina’s national state-run airline has always been a bit
of a joke. Aerolíneas
has more workers than passengers, receives an enormous injection of state money
to keep it afloat and is plagued by strike action. Just today, the company cancelled six flights affecting 1,600 passengers as pilots continue to strike over pay.
My experience happened last week. I thought we'd done pretty well having having come away from our travels with Aerolíneas pretty unscathed. We tried to book as many of our internal flights
with LAN, now LATAM, which seems to be the only other competitor to Aerolíneas
in Argentina. However, we finally succumbed to Aerolíneas when my husband and I went to Bariloche last December. We even got a free alfajor (although I disagree about the HuffPost's verdict on the merits of this biscuit).
Therefore, I was nonplussed when we decided to fly with
Aerolíneas last week to Cordoba. The flights were cheap and were almost the
same cost as a nine-hour bus journey from Buenos Aires to Cordoba. Lesson
number one: there’s always a price to pay for seemingly cheap flights.
When we arrived at Cordoba airport, we had barely gotten off the flight to find the luggage had pretty
much been put out and collected. Event number one: our large rucksack had
failed to make it on the flight with us. We were on an internal 1hr15
minute-flight with no stopovers… come’on. The guy at the reclaims desk
was very friendly and said the rucksack would be with us the next morning… bear in mind we were talking about a Sunday in Argentina.
I take it back, it arrived all the way from Cordoba airport
to the B&B where we were staying at in Alta Gracia.
Minus my face cream though. It was only Boots Time Delay and it had been on
offer, but these things are hard to come by in Argentina.
The rest of the trip was fine and lovely, with no further
flights involved until we went back to BA. Event number two: we were due to fly
back on the Friday around lunchtime. Luckily we turned on the TV before breakfast and heard that several domestic and
international flights by Aerolíneas and sister company Austral had been
cancelled. Heck :(
My husband had received an email at 10pm the night before about the
cancellation. Well, thanks. Lesson number
two: check, check and check your emails, especially if you’re flying with Aerolíneas the next day. Helpfully, the email contained no information except a number to call – to no avail. I used up all my
credit trying to get through to customer services.
The scene at the airport was pretty chaotic. There
was no information on any of the boards, simply a person at the information
desk who kindly told us that our flight had been cancelled. Great.
I wouldn’t have minded so much if there had been a process as to how to get on the next flight rather than just
saying the flight had been cancelled. No, instead there were various queues
forming all over the place; no one knew where to go; who to speak to – it was pretty much a free for all.
I didn’t really want to have to pull the pregnancy card, but
I also wanted to get back home. Here we were thinking we’d have to wait in the
airport for a few hours and board a plane later that evening. The earliest
flight would be Sunday, the woman at the counter told us. Unbelievable.
Ironically, Aerolíneas’s in-flight magazine had
claimed that factors such as punctuality rates had improved. Moreover, Isela Costantini,
the airline’s new CEO, expects the company to be profitable within four years’time. Hah, I think the pilots need to fly the planes first.
I know it’s not her fault and she also called the strike
“madness”. However, as long as unions take such action on a whim, Aerolíneas will remain one big joke that no one is laughing at.
