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| The good ole days of Swiss Air |
Swiss Air isn't what it was
I regret my most recent trip with Swiss Air. So much so that this is an open letter to the Swiss Air Board of Directors (listed below).I've gone through the normal complaint mechanisms and the most I can obtain is a "sorry you feel this way".
My saga starts off with me calling the Swiss Air 800 number in the US. I was surprised that changing the flight via Expedia resulted in a doubling of the ticket price. All I wanted to do was to have a two day extension in Geneva on my way back from Brussels. It was a connecting flight and I've done this type of thing many times.
To my surprise, the Swiss Air representative said his system also doubled the price of the ticket for a layover. I asked if I could just drop the return flight from Brussels to Geneva on my way home. I would pick up a cheap Easy Jet flight. He said I could drop that leg if I paid a $75 fee at the airport.
When I went to the service desk in Geneva (on my way to Brussels) I was told that I had been misinformed and that I would have to pay $600 not to fly Swiss Air from Brussels to Geneva. That's right, I was asked to pay $600 to NOT fly a short leg of my combined ticket. The entire ticket cost $735.
I already had a flight from Brussels to Geneva two days before my flight to JFK. Now I had to buy another ticket so that I could flight from Geneva to Brussels early in the morning so that I could be on my morning flight from Brussels to Geneva. If I was not on the Swiss Air Brussels to Geneva flight, my flight from Geneva to JFK would have been cancelled and showing up at the gate would have been of no use -- even with a boarding pass.
I was furious that Swiss Air declined to stand by their representative's statement. But, I purchased a second ticket so that I could return to Brussels in time for my flight back to Geneva.
My flight arrived in Brussels in time for the boarding of the Swiss Air flight to Geneva. But, the Swiss Air flight was delayed and they "had to clean" the plane for 30 minutes. Which resulted in them missing their allocated time slot. But during the flight, I was assured that the flight to JFK would be there. We arrived a few minutes before Swiss Air 22 was due to leave. Even though I had a boarding pass, Swiss Air decided to remove me from the flight and put me on a much later flight from Geneva to Frankfurt so that I could get on a later flight to JFK via Luftansia. The Luftansia flight was the only trouble free part of the trip.
Swiss Air refused to pay for meals, nor did they offer me a seat on the next day's flight. I was forced to wait for many hours with no reimbursement or provisions for eating. They didn't even offer me a voucher for the Swiss Air lounge.
I've flown a lot and bad things do happen. What I find so egregious is that Swiss Air does not seem to think that it's done anything wrong. The above list is only the major points on what they did wrong. I've been flying with them for over 20 years and I can say that this experience has shown me that the Swiss Air of the past isn't the Swiss Air of today!
For curious board members, my complaint reference is: Case no. 1703-LX-08178-F001
Your former happy customer
