On January 1, 2026, I booked Flight 388 to Key West, Florida, with a return on Flight 389 for an April 4-8 to visit our son who is a couple of hours away. The original departure time was 1:30 PM, and the return flight was at 6:39 PM--perfect for our plans. We booked our hotel and rental car, and everything seemed fine.
Six days later, we received an email stating that our departure time had been changed to 7:00 AM, which significantly disrupted our plans. Shortly after, another email arrived apologizing for the inconvenience and offering us $50 each in Avelo Cash.
We weren't happy, but we figured, "What can you do?" and rearranged our hotel stay to accommodate Avelo's change.
Three days later, my wife received an alert from her credit card company notifying her that the $558 we had paid for the two tickets had been credited back. That seemed strange, so we called Avelo to find out what happened. After hours of waiting, we were told that our flight had been "canceled" and that if we wanted to fly, we would need to rebook it ourselves on their website.
It's a good thing my wife received that credit card alert--otherwise, we would have assumed everything was still set. We went back to Avelo's website and rebooked the exact same flight on the exact same days, with the exact same flight times, and even selected the same seats. This time, however, the total cost was over $750, and the $100 in Avelo Cash was not available in our account.
I called Avelo again and eventually spoke with a customer service representative. When I asked about the price difference, I was told that they do not control pricing, so there was nothing they could do. She speculated that a promotion may have been running when we first booked, saving us $30 per ticket, and that the promotion had ended by the time we were forced to rebook. She would not reapply the promotion, even though we originally bought the tickets under the promotion and we did not cancel, they did. When I pointed out how convenient that was for the airline, she agreed but said there was nothing she could do.
As for the Avelo Cash, I was told it could take several weeks to appear in our account, so we couldn't apply it to the rebooked flight.
In summary, we booked a flight, Avelo changed the flight time, then canceled the flight without clearly notifying us, forcing us to rebook. When we rebooked the exact same flight, we were charged over $200 more, and we still haven't received the $100 credit. In effect, Avelo's mistake cost us $300.
We are extremely disappointed and feel like we were played. At this point, our only option is to share our experience with anyone who will listen. I will be submitting complaints to Avelo, posting this review wherever possible, and telling others about what happened. We hope Avelo treats customers better in the future, but unfortunately, we will not be flying with them again.
I posted this complaint on their website and received an auto-reply saying someone will contact me. If they ever resolve this to our satisfaction, I will come back and update this review. read more