John S

Review of VivaColombia

WORST air travel experience of my life. Viva Air i...

WORST air travel experience of my life. Viva Air is incompetent, dishonest, and 100% unprofessional.

Even after I booked and paid for my Juliaca-Lima flight six weeks before traveling, I couldn't complete my booking online (passport no., emergency contact, etc.) until a few hours before departure. Also couldn't pay for "extras" like checked bag and seat assignment online in advance - Viva's ridiculous website wouldn't allow those routine functions. I tried at original booking AND after Viva inexplicably changed the flight time a couple of weeks before my trip.

Chaos continued @ Juliaca Airport, where a modest load of pax waited 40+ minutes to check in for the airline's ONLY flight. Why? Who knows. Maybe I should have asked the employee standing behind the counter doing NOTHING for the whole time a line of 40 got no closer to check-in. I guess the other agents were busy nickel-and-diming and verbally abusing pax whose carry-ons exceeded the size limit by 0.2 cm.

The overcrowded boarding area had no departure board, insufficient seating, and inadequate signage. Five minutes before published departure time, aircraft hadn't even arrived. By the time it did arrive (45 mins late), agents had made NO announcements. Nothing.

Boarding area was chaos, even though it was hardly understaffed. Agents were totally indifferent to my questions and complaints (I'm pretty sure they get a lot of complaints and thus have learned to dismiss them). The lack of communication and any semblance of order in lining pax up by boarding group is incomprehensible and unprofessional. An apology for the delay and disorder? Ha ha!!! These people don't give a flying f***.

Onboard product is what you'd expect from an LCC or ULCC (think Ryanair, Vueling, Spirit, or Allegiant, but utterly outrageous catering prices). In-flight experience is fine, given those low standards, but it doesn't make up for the absolutely horrible and stressful booking-checkin-boarding nightmare.



If anything positive has come from my AWFUL experience with Viva Air, the first thing would be that my Viva complaint is trivial compared to other posters' genuine horror stories. I feel bad for everyone else who has suffered so much worse @ Viva's greedy hands. The second is the conversation I had at the general info desk @ Lima airport. When I told her I had a complaint to file about Viva, she gave me a pained look and said Viva is the absolute WORST airline flying in S. America. She hears scores of complaints at her desk every week. We both had to laugh a little.