Worst Experience ever! Should of listen to our friends on not booking with Viva Aerobus. My trip was from LAX to Merida with one lay over. Our friends told us they are more likely then not to delay our flight, cancel our flight, or overbook the flight. They told us many times not to book it. However we booked it anyways. Our trip cost us about $950 for two passengers, my wife and I had one check in luggage total. Compared with other airline at time of booking, the price was about $750 per ticket. We figured how bad can it be. We're headed to mexico couple days early for a walkeding and if our flight is delayed a couple of hours we'll still be there on time. Afterall, our 17 months old baby will be staying with grandma. So some alone time anywhere is as good as anywhere.
Our original booking was
Departing flight
2/17/2024 LAX - GDL 2350HRS - 0455HRS
2/18/2024 GDL - MID 0925HRS - 1140HRS
Return flight
2/21/2024 MID - MEX 0905HRS - 1110HRS
2/21/2024 MEX - LAX 1935HRS - 2140HRS
Around 2230hrs on 2/16/2024 i went online to check in. The website advised us that our flight has been cancelled and changed. Our option was to not accept the flight and to get a full refund or to accept the changs. This was the night before. What are we going to do? Ofcourse we had to accept the flight. The new flight is as follows. They changed both our departing and return flight.
Updated Flight
Departing flight
2/17/2024 LAX - MEX 1840-1210
2/18/2024 MEX - MED 0620-0810
Returning flight
2/21/2024 MID - MEX 0905HRS - 1110HRS
2/21/2024 MEX - LAX 0630HRS - 0835HRS
Yes notice the returning flight, my connecting flight from MEX-LAX actually departed before my first flight even happened. I will get into this later.
Come the day of 2/17/2024. We got to the airport "LAX, terminal 1" at 1415hrs for check in and boarding time of 1745. Upon checking in no gates was assigned, then at a later time. It was assigned to the other side of the airport, Tom Bradley Terminal. So of course we walked over there, no big deal we can use the exercises. But once we got there, our flight was now delay to about 2030hrs boarding time.
With the updated change, the original plan was to land in Mexico City at 0010hrs. My friends and I booked a room at the Hilton inside the airport to rest our eyes instead of sleeping inside the domestic terminal while waiting for our layover. With the new time, we got to our hotel at about 0230hrs and got to use the room until 0400hrs before heading back for our next flight. We paid the full room price for one and a half hour of usage.
We also booked a room for our return flight. Our layover on the return flight was 19 hours and 20 minutes. We figured with that layover it'll be great, we would be able to go into Mexico City and explore around for a bit.
***Each room cost about $175 USD***
***Note***
With the late change in flight we now have to ask grandma to watch our Daughter for an extra night last minute. Our trip was planned out months ahead.
After the layover, we got to our destination on time with our second flight Hooray!
Now for the returning flight.
On the morning of 2/21/2024, we got to the airport around 0700hrs for our check in. When checking in, the attendant had little patient with me since I didn't speak Spanish. We were trying to use Itranslate app to assist with our communication. We were able to come to an understanding that our second leg of the flight from MEX to LAX that was reassigned to us from the airline had has already happened and that we were only going to fly to Mexico City and that was the end of our trip and that we had to purchase new tickets if we wanted to get back to LA.
What just happened?!? Did someone manually change my flight, or did their system not flag the fact that the 2nd leg of the flight happens before the first and that I can't be in two places at once.
Then the attendant in Merida told me here the service desk number you can call them to figure it out or there is a help desk in Mexico City airport.
My wife and I then flew to MEX knowing that we had to get to MEX or somewhere else to fly back to LA. There was no direct flight from Merida to LA.
Upon arrival to Mexico city we go to the service desk, the line for the service desk was super long, seems like everyone at the service desk was having ticketing issue. Again, I was unable to communicate with the attendant at the service desk using my translating app, but this time. I called a friend. I live in LA, ofcourse I have friends that speaks Spanish. My friend was on speaker translating for me. The clerk was able to print me out my intenary and sent me on my way and circled my flight. She told us that we were good for tomorrow and shuu me away so she can help someone else. "At this point there was about 10 groups in line each group took about 10 minutes.
As I was walking away, I looked at the intenary she gave me. It was intenary for the flight that has already departed this morning! If they read more