Poor show on AV121 LHR-BOG on 21/08
 

Pretty poor service on Friday night's AV121, from London to Bogota the ticket was bought as meant to be travelling the Dreamliner and this was changed to an A330 sometime beforehand. Inflight we received one drink with dinner, i had to go find a crew member later to ask for another drink and was told no, as they had ran out of alcoholic drinks. I had to settle for a (cold) coffee instead. :td:

I'll stick to connecting flights to BOG with BA/IB/AA in future.

...and?

and what? Simply saying I had poor service and expected better, I'm perfectly entitled to say so on here without being belittled, given that is what this site is for.

Don't think that's true...

Agreed. Venting about poor service is a time-honored FT tradition.

I wonder what their catering service is like in LHR. I've never had anything but good service on AV, but I've never flown them long haul.

The equipment change stinks, but such is life. You're paying for the destination/route not the aircraft. Plus the A330 business seats aren't awful or anything. If you're a fan of IB/AA/BA, you SHOULD give them your business rather than chase a possibility with someone else. If you like AV and just hoped that it would stay 787, then ok, you got burned a bit, but bad service is bad service and can happen on any airline.

I did not read the OP post to mean that he thought the switch was particularly heinous, but that one drink on LHR-BOG is. I'd be pretty upset myself at that. I've had bad service, but running out of booze after one drink for bus. class is egregious.

My experience on AV has been good too. If I were the OP, I would write them a short note. I know Colombian businesses often blow them off, but it wouldn't hurt.

I flew this exact same route in J last October connecting from SQ from SIN and enroute to LIM via BOG. As this is a redeye, enough to say that we were really tired and just went to sleep as soon as the plane took off. When my wife and I woke up (about 4 hours after departure), they did not have any food left, not even desserts. I received a tiny bag of snacks and that was it. They claimed that the freezers had gone bad, but truth is, the FA were eating the food right there in the galley. This was really frustrating, specially coming from an SQ flight where they did respect our food (because we also slept thru it) and even did not have any problems doing the full catering.

Avianca may have an excellent hard product in their new 330s and 787s, but their soft product is truly mediocre. Now I do everything I can to cross the pond without flying them. Next month I am trying TK from EZE to IST via GRU :)

That's really disappointing to hear. I wonder if the FA's on the long haul routes suffer from the AC syndrome of high seniority = usually bad service. Admittedly again I haven't flown them long haul, I'm also not a frequent J flyer, but the only time I've had this happen to me was on a UA flight YVR-ORD where I slept through the breakfast service and saw the FA eating it later when I was never offered it when they came by to offer me a drink.

I am hopeful to try the AV long hauls one day, but I don't really see what situation I'll have to do it.