Avianca experience
 

Just wanted to post some fun facts about my experience on Avianca this past week. I traveled via award booked on united.com

1) Traveling from Lima to Cuzco, myself and my fiancee were the only 2 people in business class. Had the whole cabin to ourselves.
2) As they prepped for the safety demonstration, the FA came up to us and asked if we needed to see the demonstration!!! We declined, madness.
3) On our return we had a tight connection in Lima and wanted to move our first fight forward. This proved impossible to do via phone and you can not make changes to itineraries on their website (yet). Customer Service told us to arrive 5 hours early to make this happen. We arrived 3 hours before our flight and were able to change to an earlier flight after a bit of back and forth with the counter representative.
4) Cusco airport does not have arrival/departure monitors once you pass through security. There are no gate change announcements and the gate agents carry around 10 inch speakers to make announcements. Stay alert!
5) In Lima, you have to re-pass through security when making a connection. The international gate area is much nicer than then domestic area. There is a star alliance lounge called "Sumaq" directly passed the international security area.
6) A330 from LIM-BOG had lie-flat seating, but did not on the flight from BOG-JFK.
7) Despite #2, the FA's take their jobs seriously. No electronics on during take-off/landing, blanket must be on the floor and the pillow behind your back (I'm unsure why they hand these out before take off)

Hope these travel bits help.

I love these little experiences, I had a miserable time at MEX but it's little things like "the agents carry around 10 inch speakers" that make me love latin America. The domestic stuff is always more authentic :).

As far as the lie flats go, it's a bit maddening with UA since there's no consistency. There's consistency with AV but it's maddening for a different reason. You'll get a repositioning A330 for MDE-BOG (25 min flight) or MDE-MIA (I don't think they do this one anymore but they did for a while, 2.5 hour flight), but BOG-IAD (almost 5 hours) is on an A319 which is nice, but the J isn't up to par for an international flight of that distance.

I love flying Avianca, I do it whenever I can (which isn't enough) but they are a bit price prohibitive for me where Copa can beat their fares 7/10 times.

I used to fly United on a weekly basis during my years with Accenture. Now that I'm in Colombia I've gotten to know Avianca and like it much much more than United or any other American carrier.

I flew AV for the first time this year on a reward ticket from US. I had a total of four segments (two international and two domestic) and I must say I liked AV very much. A few days later I joined AV Lifemiles because US had left Star Alliance.

At BOG I could tell that the ticket agent wasn't too sure of her English fluency because as I approached the counter she was trying remember some of questions she had to ask me in English. After I starting speaking Spanish with a Mexican accent, her fear melted away and she laughed. This "gringo" who speaks Spanish like a Mexican really took her by surprise.