My first experience with Austrian Airlines was booked though Lufthansa for a r/t flight from Bucharest to Prague. In a nutshell: what an absolutely horrendous experience and abysmal customer service. Never again. I expected more from a Lufthansa partner in Europe.
It started with my check-in experience at the airline counter at OTP. I expressed concern to the Austrian Airlines employee that my husband and I weren't seated next to our 3 and 5 year olds and requested we all be seated together. She immediately dismissed me without so much as looking at our tickets, told me there was "nothing she could do" and shrugged her shoulders. Are you kidding me?? Isn't your top priority supposed to be SAFETY?? And you're not willing to rearrange seats for a family to avoid 3 and 5 year olds sitting alone without their guardians? Unbelievable and absolutely appalling for an airline. I was speechless.
Things got worse when our return flight from Prague was cancelled at 10:43pm the night before our planned 7:20am departure the following morning. It was nearly impossible to contact customer service to complete the rebooking process. Due to the incredibly long wait times we couldn't get another flight out for 3 days and they wouldn't rebook us on an earlier flight that we found as available online, instead saying that it was fully booked. We ended up having to request a refund for our return flight and book our new return flight - on another airline - independently (the same one they told us was fully booked). A stressful and frustrating experience that left us swearing we'd never use Austrian Airlines again. We would actively avoid this airline in the future and would never recommend. read more