Iberia is a disaster- you have been warned

It is my first post on this forum, however it is also my duty to inform all regular travellers of my recent Iberia disaster:

1. my booking through Iberia.com:
i booked 2x 1 way tickets in business from MVD to CPH in December. i received an initial email stating that this was a booking but not yet a confirmation but that a second email would follow. A second email did follow and i assumed that was that.
the day i was due to fly, i tried to check in online, but my record locator gave me an error. After a call i was informed that the ticket had not been issued. No effort was made by the airline to contact me, no email telling me of a problem, credit card company tells me there was not even an attempt to charge the card. Amazing…but there is better.

2. I reroute through SAO. No, there were no seats on the MVD flight and no, i could not speak to a manager. We arrived in MAD, the connection was tight. We got on the flight but there was no food, our meals had been removed. The pilots and crew were fed but not us. Stewardess took our baggage tags to check with the pilot that they were on board, we were told that they were definitely in the hold

BUT 3. no bags at CPH. I understand that bags do miss connections. However, Iberia baggage team seriously disappointed us-here we are in Denmark, my wife in a summer dress and flip-flops,i am in tshirt and jeans and we have a dinner party that night with a black tie wedding the following. No, they were not able to get our bags on the first flight the next day, no, they would not help, give us an allowance to buy any clothes/make up/cosmetics/medication beyond the e50 per day minimum (BA incidentally paid over £1500 when they lost my ex girlfriends bag on the way to a wedding in Toronto a few years ago) and NO, we could not speak to anyone in authority under any circumstances whatsoever.

My wife was walking around Copenhagen in puddles of slush in her flipflops, i wore a $150 tux to a society wedding, my wife top shop and borrowed cloths

Iberia win the worst airline customer service award of the decade and I will try and avoid them for the rest of my travelling life. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

I also agree according to your experience, although i think it is your fault that you didn’t realize that your card hadn’t been charged the amount, which if you had check you’d be aware that you don’t have ticket for this flight.

Funnily enough, two of the best flights I ever experienced were MAD/GRU/MAD in Business Plus.

Those are the only 2 flights I ever did with IB in long haul and thus cannot make a serious evaluation of their nomal service, but I did enjoy them.

I think there’s plenty BA has already done to improve its own operation, while keeping costs under control.

Much of this experience will be highly relevant to Iberia, which has a similar “former State-owned” culture.

BA needs to go further before it has the authority to lecture others on how to delivery consistently great service, but there are beacons of excellence within BA which should be allowed to permeate all aspects of the airline, and I would hope this will happen at Iberia once BA take a more proactive role there.

I don’t dispute that Iberia can be a challenge to deal with, but I would make the point that where there is scope for improvement, there is also scope for value creation, and that is (among many other reasons) a good situation from which to start reaping the rewards of the combined entity. I would hope the move from wedgie beds to fully flat in Iberia Plus is an example of this.

And hopefully, BA might learn some things from Iberia, though quite what that might be I am currently at a loss to articulate. The main benefit for BA is access to Madrid which can be a springboard to connect the word via a hub which isn’t saturated.

I’m flying IB LHR-MAD-VLC in a few weeks. That’ll be the second time I’ve used them within Europe in Business Class, and last time I thought they were nothing special, but reasonably good value for money.

In the light of these posting, I now await the flights with some degree of trepidation, although I accept that Julian’s experience was on long-haul.

As far as the biggest heap of doo-doos for lost luggage, LOT has to take my personal biscuit. I refer to my previous postings a few weeks ago, when they managed to lose the same bag (out of the two I was travelling with) on the outward AND return legs. Pretty impressive incompetence in my view. Having said that, I greatly sympathise with Julian and hope he never experiences those problems again. With any airline.

Happy, safe and quiet flying.

Simon

I always thinks of Iberia as a budget airline.
The first and the last time i flew it was from AMS-MAD, last minutes decision that influenced by an emergency situation, the price was rocket high in Economy, no food and the service was below average, even air asia got a better service. But to be honest, as long as my bag and I arrived, i don’t really care.

Willie Walsh does have a record of bringing every brand he touches into disrepute, only this time he won’t have to try. I think he’ll fit right in, only this time with even more resistance from its employees.