Iberia Airlines Do Yourself a Favor and NEVER Fly Iberia Madrid, Spain/JFK Airport New York

I flew Iberia back in November, and the trip was fine.

Upon my return, I checked into my flight in Madrid and was told that I was a standby passenger. I asked why, as I was 2.5 hours early for my flight, and the check-in agent wouldn't give me an answer. I was simply told to go to the customer service desk.

I stood in line at customer service for 1.5 hours, waiting to find out what was going on with my flight. At no point was there an announcement telling us that 20 of us, who had confirmed seats, were displaced. When I finally got to the custom,er service agent, he was pleasant enough, and booked me to go to London and spend the night in London, then fly to Boston the next morning.

Part of the deal was that we would be compensated 600 euros for being thrown off of our confirmed flight. I tried to get the money in Madrid, but they had run out of cash, which they were hading out to displaced passengers. I was told by customer service that ANY ticketing agency in the world could process compensation requests. Since time was running out to get to my flight to London, I was told to get money in London.

When we (the 9 displaced passengers on this particular flight) got to London, we were told by the Iberia agent to process our request in the States since she did not have any money in London and we would be issued a check in pounds, which could take awhile to clear in the US and have associated fees.

I just went to the JFK airport (Ilive 4 hours away), which has an Iberia ticketing office, and I was told that they can't help me! The ticketing agent gave me the customer service phone number, which I had called previously, and basically told me to call them and to take it up with them.

I explained that I called that number and they told me to come to a ticketing office. I also told her that the customer service office for Iberia could not/would not give me the phone number of their ticketing offices and did not even have the hours of operation for the ticketing offices. Very helpful!

The ticketing agent said I could speak to a supervisor and told me to go to the check-in counter. I went to the check-in counter and they asked me why the ticketing agent didn't call the supervisor herself. They suggested that I go to another passenger desk-in and ask for a different supervisor because the one I needed to talk to was busy boarding a flight.

I spoke to a supervisor who was facilitating the boarding an Iberia flight, but was a British Airways employee. She was great!

I stood waiting for an Iberia supervisor, whom she tracked down for me, but he was just too busy boarding flights. She copied my information, took my number and told me that he would call me.

Guess what? No phone call! I am once again going to go to the airport and blindly hope to get someone who might be able to help me.

One of the more frustrating things is that I bought my airline ticket through American Airlines because I am a frequent flier with them and Iberia is one of their partners. I called the AAdvantage number to see if they could help me, but they weren't able to help me at all. When I mentioned Iberia, the customer service agent said, "we get complaints about them all the time."

I think Iberia needs to get thrown off of the One World Alliance! The Aadvantage agent was quite helpful and even tried to get me through to customer service, but the line for Iberia customer service was busy, disconnected or just not working properly. Communicating with customer service was impossible because they were so rude and unhelpful, just like the ticketing agent at JFK.

The moral of the story is, don't fly Iberia, EVER! Hopefully, I'll get my monetary compensation someday.

Sarah
West Dover, Vermont
U.S.A.