Visiting סבתא for Mother's Day

We venezuelans celebrate Mother's Day on the second Sunday of May, and this date for me has always been special because I am blessed by having two moms (Graciela, the one who brought me to life, and Angela, who is also my granny and the one who raised me) and also, as time has passed by, I have gained another mom, Roraima, my stepmom. The three of them are SO different to each other, yet they have quite a few things in common, apart from being very sui generis women and moms.

So this time I decided to spend the whole sunday with her, instead of leaving right after lunch. C'mon, it's HER day! But I needed to find a way to come back as fast as possible after sunday, without having to take a day off since the semester is about to end and my work load increases a lot. What to do? I inmediately thought of buying an airline ticket. I started browising the web ..

• Aeropostín? (slang for Aeropostal where "postín" stands for "delay") Nah, 180,000 Bs. and I could face the risk of having my flight delayed 2-3 hours, which at the end would make me get to work at noon.
• Aserca Airlines? they quit flying to Barquisimeto without notice (too bad, I took my internships there and I felt you know, like being "home")
• LASER? Too bad, they just fly between Caracas and Margarita Island and their service is impeccable
• RUTACA? They don't even know Barquisimeto exist. It's a Eastern-based airline
• Conviasa? Very affordable prices, but they're a start-up airline and haven't started flying to Barquisimeto yet
• Santa Bárbara? No way! 240,000 Bs. for a tourist class ticket!
• Avior Airlines? Small planes, but they boast the newest fleet in Venezuela. Flying these tiny Beechcraft 1900Ds can be funny. let's give it a shot. Wow, nice website, load very fast, totally optimized, uodated info .. the price is just OK, 159,000. Let's try online shopping .. very fancy, I can even "see" how the allocation of seats is in the plane. The frequen flyer program is very fancy, although lacks more alliances, but that's OK for now. Let's flight with these guys.

Everything was so good until 2 days later, I received a voice message saying that my flight (departing at 6:15 am from Barquisimeto) was cancelled and I was assigned a seat on the next flight, at 11:15 am. That I couldn't take! So I called them and explained that I cannot take that late flight and that I ought to take an early morning flight. The operator told me I could get a voucher valid for one year on the same route, which I rejected because I need my flight. Then I thought that I could have it changed to that saturday then, on the opposite direction. She agreed. But then, I realised that it's not worth it, so I called them back and they connected me to one supervisor, he told me he would try to find a transfer to another airline serving that route on Monday morning (either Aeropostal or Santa Bárbara) .. he never called. So I called the next morning, and asked for a solution. They connected me to the same operator that had called me first, and she was NOT polite at all and stated clearly that she had "cleared all matters" with me and that she won't take any responsibility. Man, that pissed me off! What a bitch! I reminded her that as a flight agent, her first duty when a flight is cancelled is asking the passenger if he/she can fly with another airline, on a similar route/schedule, which she did not do. Oh, she hated that! and I was right! So we argued for a minute, and I told her that as a former airiline employee, I was dissapointed of her attitude and lack of professionalism. She told me then that I could get a 75% refund, which I rejected because the flight was cancelled by them, not by me! After arguing that, she told me I could e-mail and call the cusrtomer client support manager, which I did, with a LONG and detailed e-mail (CCing the presidency and Reservations).

The Customer Support Manager, a very nice lady, accepted all my arguments, and told me she was going to help me and call me before 5 PM, and she later sent an e-mail copying all parties involved on my case uring to solve it. 4:30 pm. No phone calls. I called her and she told me she was going to call me ASAP. She did, and she got me an Aeropostal flight on the schedule I had bought with Avior and apologised for the inconveniences, since apparently the girl at the Call center was new and did not command all of the protocols, which I reminded her as a former airline employee I am. Of course I thanked her for all the support and reminded her that I have always supported Avior Airlines because they do serve like a world-class airline. It seems it worked commanding all the airline jargon :-)

Avior rocks!!! סבתא, here I go! :-)