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TACA Airlines - One of the Worst Airlines I have done business with

Sunday, April 27th, 2008

I’ve traveled extensively in my life but never had to deal with an airline like TACA. The typical experience with TACA is unintelligible customer support (in their own language), a phone system that drops your calls when on hold or transferring at nearly a 50% rate and simply lazy incompetent staff.

Last trip I took with them (to Nicaragua) involved a checkin time of nearly an hour. That wasn’t an hour waiting in line or anything. It was nearly an hour at the desk waiting for them to get their asses out of their hands and get a simple, baggage-free checkin done. During that time the other 4 members of the staff huddled around one of their cell phones leaving the growing line behind us waiting the whole time as well.

Today I am calling TACA to pay for my tickets tomorrow. They tell me that I should pay over the phone because doing so at the airport would require arrival 4 hours before the flight. Now I’ve been calling them for about a week trying to pay them, but their credit card processing service is invariably off line and every time I’ve called so far they have dropped the call while transfering or holding, requiring me to start all over again.

This is the most ridiculous level of competence I’ve seen in an airline in all my life. A damn shame they don’t have enough competition in the region to make this change.

But if you can, avoid TACA!