michaelr

Recently I booked three flights on airberlin. The particular issue with all three flights were/are the seat reservations. All flights are across the Atlantic.

1. I booked a flight for my daughter and myself. I called and reserved two business class seats. The seats were unilaterally changed by airberlin with no notification/explanation when he boarded. It did not matter much and raised an eye brow.

2. I booked an economy flight for my father. He purchased a seat. The flight was canceled and he ended up flying on AA through LHR. He requested a refund multiple time and was ignored. He finally used a credit card charge back. airberlin keeps sending him invoices even though the flight never took place and they have been notified multiple times via email/letter.

3. I booked another economy flight for my mother and reserved an XL seat. During the payment process the website went belly up. My cc never got charged. AA's website using their record locator for this flight, however, does now show that she has the seat I selected. When I go to airberlin's website, it does not show a seat map any longer. The only option is to call at this time, I guess. I am more than happy to pay but what a pain this is.

Is this just bad luck or is airberlin just simply incompetent?

swiss_global

Hi Michael, I can understand your frustration. In my own experience AB is doing relatively well in terms of seat reservation, relative to other European carriers (in my own experience the worst is LX) ... North American carriers are much better in this respect.

I can only give you advice on your third case. I would recommend checking the booking on Amadeus (www.checkmytrip.com). This is the system AB is actually using, so if you can see the seat reservation there, it is there. If not you may still purchase an XL seat by calling them (if the website doesn't work).

michaelr

Sweet. Thank you for that tip. Checkmytrip.com shows seat 14h as confirmed. However, given the situation that no money was taken, I will still call them. I'd rather pay ~$80 and then have AB change the seat assignment, once/if their IT system catches on.

The gripe I have with calling is that they use 900 type numbers in Germany and will charge for that as well.

Zaphod

Actually, they don't: Their German call center can be reached at +49-30-34343434; that's a local Berlin number and will (only) be charged by your network operator at normal rates.

michaelr

You are right. It was just a regular call. I am not sure why I was thinking it was one of those 0180X numbers. Anyway, the good news is that someone actually picked up within 1 minute and was able to competently see that the seat was reserved but my cc not charged. So I paid and five minutes later, I had a confirmation in the mail.

I do hope AB stays around as an alternative to LH. Now if only the new Brandenburg airport opened up...

Fornebufox

You're not alone.

I spent over an hour trying to check in for a return flight to the US. Air Berlin first allowed me to check in for the connection to DUS, but not DUS-US. Two different employees (with Slavic names and heavy accents--I though the call center was in Romania?) were kind but utterly unhelpful. ("it's supposed to work, just wait a little while"--9 hours after checkin opened) Later the TATL checkin option appeared, without my previous seat assignment nor the possibility of choosing a seat (I tried with two different browsers). A second phone call to buy an XL seat took 15 minutes and I almost ended up paying 80€ for the (non LX) seat I already had.

The weird part was the insistence that I had booked through a travel agency--I booked directly on the Air Berlin website--and they could not even give me upgrade fare information. When I first checked EF business looked wide open, though now it's showing only 1 seat for sale. Eastbound I was offered the chance to bid on an upgrade, but not on the westbound--presumably because I was somehow now considered a travel agent customer. ...??

Spectacularly poor IT and frustratingly, uh, inexperienced CSR. As an AA/OneWorld flyer think I'll stick with BA over the pond to Germany.

bhomburg

I can only reiterate: When calling AB, do not deal with the outsourced call center and its inexperienced CSRs but call the travel agent service line at +49 30-3409-9800. The agents at this one are a great deal better than the ones for the general public.

Fornebufox

I wish I'd had this info a few hours ago--did not remember this detail from skimming this board a couple of weeks ago. Isn't it a little nuts that it requires insider information to check in? I'm not a true road warrior, but having flown most of the OneWorld Europe/US-based partners in the last few years I have never encountered such hassles (though Iberia was a bit of a pain, and advance seat selection can pose challenges). If I have time at MUC I'll see if they can provide some answers.

windchaser777

I had no end of issues trying to get a refund for an AB flight of mine that was cancelled. The email responses usually ended up with "Please go to Frankfurt Airport to resolve this issue", so I ended up foregoing spending time at the arrivals lounge to fix the mess.

To their credit the ladies at the sales desk organised for my refund to go through a week later, despite them claiming it wasn't their responsibility to process refunds.