Quinlanty

2 questions? For those who have flown, what lounge is provided? I dont think that Swiss or Air India lounge is open for the 7:30 am flight? And how is the AV diamond lounge in BOG. 2. Anyone know how long Wamos is supposed to operate flights to JFK for? Hoping mid-october gives AV enough time to fly themselves

jsloan

FYI -- US DOT regulations require the disclosure of the operating airline during the ticketing process. Anyone whose flight is changed from Avianca to Wamos should be able to get a refund if so desired (if Avianca refuses, consider filing a complaint with the DOT). Anybody who can show that the flight is being marketed without the required disclosure should also be able to get a refund.

mjmqm

Swiss was open before 6:00am. AV Diamond lounge was not bad. Pleasant wines, excellent espresso, daughter loved the booths. VIP desk was super helpful for a problem we had. Food was better than AC MLL but if your hungry go elsewhere. We used the Eldorado lounge for dinner on the way back. Tried the Latam lounge and the wine was better.

br2k

Did you apply any kind of a FF program to those flights? Did Wamos flights earn mileage as Avianca flights?

jbb

I booked a JFK-BOG-LIM; CUZ-BOG-JFK routing a couple of months back for early September in business class on AV21 and AV20 for the JFK flights. Cost was US$1,250 per seat. I have been worried about this potentially getting Wamos'ed after reading all the frequent flyer chatter, despite the fact that the news is reporting the strike to have been over last December. I tried a dummy booking JFK-BOG-JFK for my dates and did get the pop-up "...will be operated by WAMOS Air". It baffles me that a major international flag carrier like Avianca can substitute out for a cheap holiday charter carrier for close to a year and on one of their flagship routes too! I could understand if it were a short-term temporary thing or if they substituted for a comparable metal, but this is ridiculous! I'm hoping that they're just putting this pop-up as a cautionary measure and plan to have this sorted out by then. It's also unacceptable that the pop-up only comes up when booking direct JFK-BOG return flights. The pop-up does not come up when trying to book one-way or as others have noted connecting routes. Clearly their IT is deficient. Oh well, that all said, I'm not going to change, and I guess that's Avianca's point I guess. I've got a big holiday booked and when push comes to shove, the timings and connections work well for me.

IAN-UK

I wonder if any of those 650K miles in premium were ever on AA/UA night-flights between Hawaii and the West Coast?




I get that you were not happy with the flight. Hence the rant. I'll give you a hyperbole pass on calling both aircraft and flight attendants filthy, and attributing the state of the cabin crew to their living in Bogota.

But stirring up concern about flight safety is a serious business
What was frightening about the flight? Why do you believe we are in danger using this service? What leads you to suggest the aircraft and/or its operation might be unsafe?

johnnywho

Normally when earning miles with *A it's the metal that counts. However, I suppose that this would be an exception here, meaning, yes, I think you would earn miles just like on Avianca.

vincewy

You may still earn miles with AV when the flights are flown by Wamos or Omni, however this may not be the case if you try to credit to other *A FFPs. See this thread as caution.

JFK-BOG Miles not Posting due to Metal Change to Omni Air

(Wamos will create the same issue, *A miles have to be flown on *A metal)

I'll be flying in a few days on this deal and 1 segment will be flown by Wamos. It may cost me more than just a few hundred dollars if I want to stick with AV metals, including work time and sleep deprivation, luckily I had built enough cushion to enable my *A gold renewal so missing only 1 semgnet won't impact it.

johnnywho

Somehow that doesn't feel right, during the whole time while booking my flight (OTA) there was never anything to let me know that I wouldn't be flying on a proper AV aircraft.

JohnnyColombia

vincewy

Another data point.

Booked AV245 March 27th. However, upon checking AV, flight was severely overbooked and many were sent to LA (if your final destination was not BOG they'll send you to nonstop flight). In terms product, I can't complain, LA's hard (787) and soft (closest you'll get with ME3 and TK) products are ahead of all of their competitors in the region. However, it's going to impact my *A renewal.

After this trip I'm thinking about flying with LA to South America going forward, everything is much more consistent.

Baron192

Interesting! If you now do a dummy booking JFK-BOG, you get the following information on avianca.com:

"As of April 6, 2018, flights AV244 and AV245 between Bogota and New York will be operated by WAMOS AIR. As of that date, flights AV020 and AV021 currently operated by that airline, will be once again operated by Avianca."

Finally they made it official!

Captain Canuck

So instead of being "Wamosed" on the morning flight you will be now be hit on the afternoon return from BOG-JFK

Hopefully they get rid of Wamos once and for all prior to my November trip....

CC

jbb

They finally put up a page explaining what's been happening on the JFK-BOG flights too. It has some useful information. The good news for me is that I'm booked on AV21 and AV20 in September so it looks like I'll get the Avianca reverse herringbone seats.

https://www.avianca.com/us/en/travel...ogota-new-york

johnnywho

and now their website is down