After almost a million miles of flights, this is perhaps the most appalling disregard for passenger safety I've seen, on Avianca airlines. I was sitting in a seat with a malfunctioning seatbelt (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1J5f_z0fmcw) and all three of my requests to be reseated were refused. There was an empty seat in the row in front of me.

I took the time to address it subsequently with their customer service department, which took me more than an hour on the phone, and another e-mail follow up with the customer service rep, and just received a response that the maintenance team determined that the seatbelt in the video above was functioning normally, and should not be able to tighten, since it had an airbag.

The airbag is designed to provide added protection in an emergency but of course did nothing to keep me in my seat during the turbulent approach or rough landing. I had to hold myself in the seat with both arms, and it concerns me that many passengers aren't capable of doing that, hence my complaint to Avianca.

Every airline has issues, but Avianca's failure to recognize the problem is really appalling. I usually book the cheapest *A flight available for any route I select, but in this case I highly suggest avoiding Avianca.