A really interesting, mixed experience with Avelo, and it almost seems pointless to review them now that they left the West Coast. I will try to mix this review as both the company as a whole, and the Burbank location, as I had a much better experience with the location in Arcata, CA.
Firstly, the price. Man oh man, there is absolutely no better price for an airline ticket that I have experienced since. I believe I had a $15 round-trip ticket from Burbank to McKinleyville and back once. That alone would give them a 5 star, no questions asked. And if I had reviewed them directly after my first few flights, this would be 5 stars. Let me get to the negatives, and circle back to the positives.
My main concern was my most-recent visit to the Burbank location, and obviously the last one I will ever do because they closed (I even had a ticket to use that they cancelled on my with no warning but that's a separate issue). Active-duty military get two free checked bags. At the time I was active-duty, and this wasn't my first time using my military ID with them, and the other few times went off without any hitch whatsoever. But this time, the lady at the checked bag area said that my ID said an incorrect birthday. To her credit, the DOB is printed in black, and it overlays the black and white photo of me on it, so it's hard to see. She confused the 5 in "1995" for a 6, and said that my ID is invalid. I told her if she looked harder it is obviously a 5, but she accused me of essentially having confirmation bias and only seeing a 5 because I want there to be a 5. It's a government issued ID I was using for years to that point to get onto literal military bases. She then said I had to pay for my luggage. The problem with that is she is essentially accusing me of having a fake ID, military no-less. That's a federal crime, so if she truly believed that, she should have called the police. But instead it was just grounds for not wanting to give me a bag check.
The ironic part of the "confirmation bias" is funny because she would ask a coworker and instead of saying, "what number do you think this is?" She would instead ask "This looks like a 6, right?" What coworker would say anything other than yes? After asking to see someone higher up (probably the only time I have ever done that in my life actually), one eventually came and saw me, told me my ID was good, gave me a checked bag, and just recommended I asked to military to issue me a new ID with a more clear 5. They never did because it was obviously a 5 and that would count as wasting time. I was worried the entire trip about the checked bags for the plane ride home, but it went off literally without a hitch. I guess that happens when people can tell the difference between a 5 and a 6.
My last point that I want to bring up is that I had one more round-trip planned with them, but the cleared out of the West Coast way earlier than they said they would. That meant they gave me a flight credit of roughly $100 for an airline I could never use again. It took me many back-and-forths with the customer support team to finally get that money back not as a credit, but they eventually did it.
So mainly, this airline was mostly pretty good, but gave me one very sour experience where they implied that I was some criminal, but not only criminal enough to not give something they said they would. That experience was a one star, most of the experiences are in the 4-5 star range, but the dishonest early closing brings them down to a 3, which I would argue should be a 2 but like I said, I got a $15 round trip once. That is amazing! read more