Experience with Aerolineas Argentinas?

[RockNVoll]

I booked a flight on Aerolineas Argentinas (AR) via Chase Ultimate Rewards.  Because I didn't book directly through the airline, they will only deal with Chase.  They airline changed the return leg of the round-trip flight and I want to cancel the ticket altogether.  AR is claiming that because they're offering me an alternative flight (different times than my original), any cancellation will be deemed voluntary and they keep 50%.  Which, really?  You can't provide the flight I actually bought and yet you get to keep 50% of my money?

Chase is still trying to sort this out for me but the only way to communicate with the airline is via email.  Between the two companies and insanely slow corporate bs, I've now been trying to cancel this ticket for about six weeks.  I know it's a long shot but thought I'd see if anyone has been successful getting a refund on an AR flight or knows what local policies for this sort of thing might be.

[mich1]

Best I’ve got is we had tickets on Pegasus Air to fly within Turkey. Normally, I ONLY book flights directly with the airline website, but Pegasus site was impossible to book on. I cried uncle, and used Expedia to book the tickets.

Fast forward to a little over 2 weeks before we leave for Turkey and Pegasus cancels the flight. They rebooked me out flying 2 days later, but I had hotels and car rentals already booked and paid for set dates. I went back and forth with Expedia, and Pegasus said they’d book us on snother flight that day, then not. I finally said F this, rebooked tickets on Turkish air and we asked for the money back from the credit card. We get the money back. I waited until about 3 days before we left, so spen5 almost 2 weeks trying to fix this before jumping to this. We were out of time..

Is there any way you can dispute the charge with Chase? You are in a strange position though, disputing a charge made by the card. However, 6 weeks of a good faith effort seems like it should be enough.

[tvlmm]

I'm on an Argentinian Travel FB group and this airline doesn't get any love. They're terrible and constantly cancelling and changing flights. They may do so again if you stick with them. Sorry you're dealing with this.

[RockNVoll]

Sept 21, 2022 1:47:56 GMT -5 mich1 said:

Best I’ve got is we had tickets on Pegasus Air to fly within Turkey. Normally, I ONLY book flights directly with the airline website, but Pegasus site was impossible to book on. I cried uncle, and used Expedia to book the tickets.

Fast forward to a little over 2 weeks before we leave for Turkey and Pegasus cancels the flight. They rebooked me out flying 2 days later, but I had hotels and car rentals already booked and paid for set dates. I went back and forth with Expedia, and Pegasus said they’d book us on snother flight that day, then not. I finally said F this, rebooked tickets on Turkish air and we asked for the money back from the credit card. We get the money back. I waited until about 3 days before we left, so spen5 almost 2 weeks trying to fix this before jumping to this. We were out of time..

Is there any way you can dispute the charge with Chase? You are in a strange position though, disputing a charge made by the card. However, 6 weeks of a good faith effort seems like it should be enough.

I had these exact same thoughts.  I may just try that next as it seems like the rewards travel program might be outsourced to a third party.  I'm also going to be demanding some of my annual fee back because this is ridiculous.

We also did the same as you and went ahead and booked new tickets rather than waiting for this to get sorted out first.  There aren't that many options to fly to Patagonia and they were both disappearing and rising in price quickly.

[RockNVoll]

Sept 21, 2022 6:23:50 GMT -5 tvlmm said:

I'm on an Argentinian Travel FB group and this airline doesn't get any love. They're terrible and constantly cancelling and changing flights. They may do so again if you stick with them. Sorry you're dealing with this.

Yeah, I have yet to hear one good thing about AR.  Problem is, they pretty much have a monopoly on flights to/from Buenos Aires to Ushuaia so I didn't have a choice.  If I had to do it again, I'd just book direct through the airline so I have more control over communications with them.  They're refusing to talk to me about it (they say they "can't") because I went through an agency so all changes need to be made through the agency.

[tvlmm]

RockNVoll, I'm so sorry, that's frustrating.
We're on a cruise to Antarctica that includes a charter flight from/to BA to/from Ushuaia. Sounds like I should be very glad for that!

[mich1]

Sept 21, 2022 12:40:28 GMT -5 RockNVoll said:

Sept 21, 2022 1:47:56 GMT -5 mich1 said:

Best I’ve got is we had tickets on Pegasus Air to fly within Turkey. Normally, I ONLY book flights directly with the airline website, but Pegasus site was impossible to book on. I cried uncle, and used Expedia to book the tickets.

Fast forward to a little over 2 weeks before we leave for Turkey and Pegasus cancels the flight. They rebooked me out flying 2 days later, but I had hotels and car rentals already booked and paid for set dates. I went back and forth with Expedia, and Pegasus said they’d book us on snother flight that day, then not. I finally said F this, rebooked tickets on Turkish air and we asked for the money back from the credit card. We get the money back. I waited until about 3 days before we left, so spen5 almost 2 weeks trying to fix this before jumping to this. We were out of time..

Is there any way you can dispute the charge with Chase? You are in a strange position though, disputing a charge made by the card. However, 6 weeks of a good faith effort seems like it should be enough.

I had these exact same thoughts.  I may just try that next as it seems like the rewards travel program might be outsourced to a third party.  I'm also going to be demanding some of my annual fee back because this is ridiculous.

We also did the same as you and went ahead and booked new tickets rather than waiting for this to get sorted out first.  There aren't that many options to fly to Patagonia and they were both disappearing and rising in price quickly.

We booked AeroMexico when we flew to South America in 2019.  They had nice connections for us…Seattle/Mexico City/BA and Santiago.  We flew Delta back from Santiago in 2021, but Delta canceled our flight and unless we wanted to fly Santiago/Lima/Atlanta/Salt Lake City/Seattle, we had to fly out the following day to get our Santiago/ATL/SEA route.

I just checked, an internal flight we took in Argentina we flew Norwegian Air Argentina.  They flew us to Iguazu, but not sure who flies into Ushuaia (assuming this is where you fly into for Patagonia).

[RockNVoll]

Sept 21, 2022 14:31:58 GMT -5 tvlmm said:

RockNVoll , I'm so sorry, that's frustrating.
We're on a cruise to Antarctica that includes a charter flight from/to BA to/from Ushuaia. Sounds like I should be very glad for that!

That's great, definitely a better setup! So I take it you booked your trip.  What company did you end up with?

[tvlmm]

Sept 21, 2022 21:51:35 GMT -5 RockNVoll said:

Sept 21, 2022 14:31:58 GMT -5 tvlmm said:

RockNVoll , I'm so sorry, that's frustrating.
We're on a cruise to Antarctica that includes a charter flight from/to BA to/from Ushuaia. Sounds like I should be very glad for that!

That's great, definitely a better setup! So I take it you booked your trip.  What company did you end up with?

The one I've been looking at for a couple of years - Atlas Ocean Voyages. They had an unheard-of BOGO deal we just couldn't pass up. FX everything goes well!

[RockNVoll]

Sept 22, 2022 6:02:22 GMT -5 tvlmm said:

Sept 21, 2022 21:51:35 GMT -5 RockNVoll said:

That's great, definitely a better setup! So I take it you booked your trip.  What company did you end up with?

The one I've been looking at for a couple of years - Atlas Ocean Voyages. They had an unheard-of BOGO deal we just couldn't pass up. FX everything goes well!

It looks really nice! And that really is an unbelievable deal, congrats. How many people does the ship hold?

[tvlmm]

I believe max capacity is 195 but at this point, they're capping it at 75% capacity. I'm really hoping that stays! I was only looking at ships with under 200 pax.

[tvlmm]

To follow up, our Atlas Ocean Voyages trip was mostly fantastic. We had 129 passengers and did a 9-day sailing on the World Traveler.

[RockNVoll]

Jan 5, 2023 10:50:00 GMT -5 tvlmm said:

To follow up, our Atlas Ocean Voyages trip was mostly fantastic. We had 129 passengers and did a 9-day sailing on the World Traveler.

Did you have any issues with COVID?  10 people on our trip had to stay in Argentina because they tested positive before boarding, then probably another 6-10 people came down with it while onboard (they were all part of the same group traveling from Australia) and were forced to quarantine in their rooms.  Out of a total of 99 guests on board, I thought that actually wasn't too bad!

[tvlmm]

RockNVoll, they took everyone's temperature and checked vax record but as far as I know, no one was tested and no passenger was quarantined. A member of the crew was in quarantine when the sailing began and came out a couple of days into the cruise.
Atlas dropped the requirement to have a negative test prior to boarding a few weeks before our Dec. 2022 sailing. We had 129 passengers (and 127 crew).
Which one did you end up doing? How was it?

[RockNVoll]

tvlmm, oh wow, you all got very lucky then that there wasn't an outbreak on the ship! Frankly I was glad for the precautions and in our case it definitely saved the rest of us from getting sick.

We traveled with Aurora Expeditions and had a great experience. Crew was great, excursions were well-run, lots of expert staff including a guy who's been a researcher in the area for like 40+ years. We were really happy with all of it.