Just read this on another chat board:

Avianca will have flights again from Los Angeles to Bogota (direct) starting in Feb., 2006. This may not affect the rest of the country but it's great news to those living in California. Let's just hope their service has improved.

Hunter


Hunter

Hunter, thanks for the Post, this is indeed good news for us Left Coasters, espec. if its non-stop and they fly their bigger planes. Copa has always been good for me but they always fly those tiny 737s and to do it for 6-7 hrs gets claustophobic. I'd imagine it'll put some competitive pressure on Copa to reduce their rates as well.

I imagine they'll be flying a 757, as they only have one or two 767s and they use that for their flagship NYC-BOG nonstop.

First class on an Avianca 757 is good seat-wise to a point - they offer more legroom than I've seen anywhere else, but it's really a waste: the seats barely recline (I tried several) and there's no footrest. If they had the same seat CO has on their 757s, I would seriously consider giving them all of my business next year. But they don't.

The IFE is terrible - in fact when the monitor is down in FC, you can't open the lav door the whole way - and I can barely squeeze in - so ridiculous I took a picture which I'll post below.

Then, after showing a crappy movie, they offer you DVD players and your choice of a dozen films: nice! So I thought I'd skip the movie the next time and go straight to the DVD, but they told me they couldn't hand out the DVD players until after the movie was over. What????

Food is mediocre, but I find that to be the case for most airline food, even up front.

The killer is their FF program: totally sucks. If you fly Avianca, you can earn miles on Delta, but NOT EQMs!!! So you'll only get status with Avianca. The way around it is to book the flight as a codeshare - but that in effect doubles the price.

And if you don't have status, the check-in lines are quite daunting - a real turn-off for me.

I love their NYC - MDE schedule, though - nonstops getting in at lunchtime and leaving in the evening - that's the only thing they have going for them.

Looked at Aviancas prices from LAX to Bogota, and Cali, they are much higher than Copa and about the same as Continental... Copa has internet specials right now, LAX to Cali $ 467 R/T, Cartagena around
$ 520, I think.