It had been hours and we were still stood waiting for our luggage to magically appear on the Barcelona Airport belts. A couple of the Spanish customers were talking animatedly to each other. It was now official. LEVEL Airlines had lost a whole plane load of 300 passengers’ luggage. My connecting flight to London left in hours and I was here in Spain without my two checked bags of outdoor gear costing thousands of pounds. It was at that moment I thought, “yep, LEVEL Airlines is definitely the worst airline ever.”
24 Hours Ago...
Flashback twenty four hours and I had already been in Santiago Airport, Chile, for five hours. My airport hotel had check out at noon, and though I had managed to get them to extend it by a couple of hours, that was all they would do. “If you need longer,” they had said, “you’ll have to pay $130 for an extra night.” Of course, in Europe and most of the rest of the world, they’re used to business travellers staying later, and generally you can pay for a late check out till evening. But this is South America, and you just have to embrace the fact that quite often things don’t work out in the most convenient or logical manner. Don’t get me started on the local SIM Cards! At least, this was an easy one – relax as much as you can in bed and then just relax for hours at the airport. I’m not an airport waiting virgin: I’ve spent 24 hours in Delhi airport, and slept on numerous dirty airport carpets with ease.
So I headed to the airport to wait. I can’t sleep on flights so keeping myself amused is key. On long haul flights, even the the red-eyes, you’ll find me hooked to the Entertainment system binge watching movies. I’d never flown Vueling before so in the taxi there, I did a little research about the airline I thought I was travelling with. I already knew Vueling was a low cost Spanish based carrier, but I had no idea that their planes didn’t have entertainment systems onboard. No problem though. Luckily, I had my tablet and headphones with me and an SD Card loaded with 10 or so movies. I was safe. I didn’t expect it to be luxury, but I thought I’d be okay.
Since I had 8 hours to kill at the airport, I thought it may be nice to find a lounge and pay for the privilege. I had never been in a lounge until a month ago I had met my companions for my Andes climb, and they had invited me to have drinks with them in a Gatwick Lounge. I’d always thought of lounges as unnecessary expenses, but once you start…
Unfortunately, there are no lounges at Santiago Airport before security but I thought if I can just check in my bags I could go through and group a lounge. At worst, I’ll be down to hand luggage and that would be comfortable.
I didn’t expect them to be checking in bags for the flight 8 hours early, but I hoped against hope. I checked on all the check-in desk screens. There was no Vueling.
I checked again.
Nothing.
Did Vueling even operate from Santiago airport?! Maybe they just weren’t on the boards yet, I reasoned with no-one but myself.
From Vueling to Iberia: The Journey to the Worst Airline Begins
I had bought my ticket with a third party seller, kiwi.com, which I rarely do. I like buying direct with the airlines, or at second best with sizeable sites that I know like Opodo or Expedia. But I had never heard of kiwi.com and their Trustpilot reviews were very mixed.
Just to be on the safe side, I downloaded the Vueling App, and I inputted my booking reference into the app to get up my booking and see when check in may commence.
Nothing. That booking reference was invalid.
I’m not one to panic. When you travel considerably, your experience has a way of calming you and resolving most of the issues. Yet, I was thinking one thing. Maybe I’ve been sold a fake flight.
It had been too good to be true. My flight out of Santiago to Barcelona had cost under £490, and when I was looking for similar flights from Santiago and Buenos Aires to go back to London they had been coming up from £1000 upwards. That’s why I’d booked with kiwi.com. Despite me not being able to find a £500 flight, they had found one. And it was with Vueling. But that didn’t seem to exist.
I scoured my booking emails with kiwi.com – booking received, payment confirmed, e-ticket. Then I finally saw it. On one of the emails, it said “Airline:Vueling. Operating Airline: Iberia”
Iberia was the sister airline of Vueling, so I deleted the Vueling App and installed the Iberia one. The bookring reference was input and up came my booking. Everything was slowly coming back to normal, but I reminded myself that potentially booking with Kiwi again was a bad thing.
Back to the check-in desk boards.
No Iberia.
Again, I thought that maybe they weren’t on there until later so I went for a Check-In Desk wander. I spotted the British Airways desks and decided to ask them about my flight. BA and Iberia are part of the same company – that’s why, for instance, they’re the only two airlines that operate out of Heathrow Terminal 5.
My Spanish is limited. I’d been learning a few more words in the last few days, but I settled for approaching one of the BA team and saying “hablas ingles”. Yes, he did speak English, and very well.
“Ah, the Iberia flight,” he said understandably and with a wry smile that I couldn’t quite decipher.
“I know it’s not till 10pm in the evening,” I said, “but I was wondering if they do check in earlier and where from?”
“I know the one,” he states, but that wry smile is still there, and it almost seems to be the unspoken form of “what have you got yourself in for!”
He tells me that check in only opens three to four hours before, and I thank him for his help.
I stretch four hours out, with pizza and a beer initially, and then with a movie on my tablet.
From Iberia to LEVEL: The Confusion Continues
The beautiful brown seats of LEVEL Economy with an airline "logo" that looks like it's been stuck on yesterday
It’s 4 hours till flytime, so I go for a wander.
No Iberia on the boards.
I walk up and down aimlessly, carting my trolley with two duffel bags and my hand luggage on. That’s the problem with hiking up the highest mountain in South America. You need walking stuff, and quite a bit of it.
I’ve just about exhausted the walkway inside, and the pavement outside up and down the drop off area. It’s 6:45pm now, and there is no sign of Iberia on anything in this bloody airport whatsoever! I’m starting to get frustrated. It’s the end of a month trip. I have a 13 hour flight to Barcelona, a 5 hour wait, and then a 2 hour flight to London. I just want to get home.
I take to the information desk and ask them about the flight. They know the flight without even having to look it up. I’m informed check in starts at 7pm, and I’ll find it at desks 7-13.
I’m queuing at the desks. I look down at my ticket. It says “Vueling flight VY7586”, but I now know it’s an Iberia flight. I look up at the Check In Desk screens I had been told to use. They say LEVEL Airlines. My spidey-sense started tingling. I just knew at this point that this was going to be one of the worst flights of my life.
This has to be the right place, I reason. If it’s not, I’ll ask them. We queue for twenty minutes, and as I head to one of the desk staff, I decide to not even ask. Give them the passport, and let them do the rest. Tell me if I’m on this plane, or send me packing.
All seems fine, until I put the second bag down on the luggage scales, and she informs me I’ve only paid for one bag.
I look at the Vueling App to help. That’s no help, as it informs me that I had meals booked but no luggage at all!
I know I booked two. In fact, I’d spent an extra £200 to book 2 x 23kg checked bags and food onboard.
I delve into the agent’s emails and triumphantly thrust out my phone to show them. Two bags booked, and confirmed on everything that kiwi.com has sent me.
It doesn’t sway them, in the slightest. The airline assures me that the travel agent hasn’t asked them to add a second bag.
LEVEL/Iberia/Vueling/whoever the f**k they are have 1 bag on their system, and so only 1 bag is going on.
Obviously, left with no other options, I decide to pay for the second bag. Thankfully, I’m pleasantly surprised. A 2nd bag will cost me 42,534 Chilean Pesos to the exact Peso. This is around £42.50 in English equivalent. I always expect bag charges at airports to be extortionate, so this surprises me. I pay and I’m relieved when the bags finally speed away on the conveyor belt.
I make another mental note not to book with kiwi.com again. Each extra bag with them had cost twice as much.
Security is painless, and shortly I’m through into the departure hall with a Starbucks frapuccino in my hand and relaxing on some chairs.
After checking all the social media on my phone twice, I decide to have a look at LEVEL airlines online.
Who are LEVEL: Probably the Worst Airline in the World TM
Unsurprisingly, they are part of IAG – International Airlines Group. They’re the same owners of Iberia, Vueling, Aer Lingus and one of my least favourite airlines, British Airways. The numbers are impressive – combined they have 570 aircraft and carry 113 million passengers a year.
I spent a period of five years refusing to fly with British Airways because of faults with their customer service and operations. I feel sorry for many of those 113 million passengers, and tomorrow I was going to feel sorry for all 300 passengers onboard our flight.
Though IAG was formed by a merger between BA and Iberia back in 2011, LEVEL came much later. Willie Walsh, the former head of the BA Ops, and now head of IAG, decided in 2017 that they needed a low-cost long-haul airline, and LEVEL was born.
It’s quite hard to see the strategic decision behind this move, though I’m no strategist or airline expert. What I do know is that Vueling was already a low-cost short haul provider, and had customers who used them regularly. They could have taken the Vueling brand and made that long-haul.
So LEVEL was formed, in effect, because of how well Norwegian Airlines were faring. They had pretty much cornered a new niche for themselves, and though many insiders believe Norwegian has grown too fast, their proposition is undeniable. You can fly from London to New York for £150 in a brand new Dreamliner, in an experience that may not be up to Virgin Atlantic but is hard to beat at hundreds of pounds cheaper.
You can see why Willie Walsh wanted a chunk of the pie.
Their history, however, seemed chequered. Starting with Barcelona as their base, in June 2017 they added Oakland, Los Angeles, Buenos Aires, and Punta Cana to their initial routes. They’ve since dropped Punta Cana, Los Angeles and Oakland from their schedules (though in their defence they now fly to San Francisco just “next door”).
Then in July 2018, they started a second base in Paris Orly flying to Montreal, and extended their Barcelona offering to include Boston. Later, that year they included Newark and Las Vegas from Paris, and in 2019 Santiago and JFK/New York from Barcelona.
But then in July 2018, they made the decision to offer short-haul flights! Let me repeat that in a slightly different way. The airline that was set up to deliver IAG low-cost long-haul destinations decided it wanted to do short-haul.
It makes no sense. IAG already has a successful low-cost short-haul airline, and its name is Vueling.
Yet it seems that LEVEL had the opportunity to fly from Vienna airport offering 14 European destinations, and they took it. This initial route plan has since died something of a death. LEVEL no longer offer any flights to Linz (Austria), Dubrovnik, Copenhagen, Hamburg, Olbia (Italy), Venice, Porto, Ibiza, Seville, Valencia, or Gatwick.
It’s hard to get a true handle on how their operations do – the IAG group website have revenue figures for their other airlines, but none for LEVEL.
They seem to be quite small still, operating 13 aircraft visiting 29 destinations with bases now in Paris, Vienna, Barcelona and Amsterdam.
With even less confidence, I waited and hoped that at least the inflight experience was good or great.
"Tonight, Ladies And Gentleman, We Are Pleased To Inform You That We Will Be Serving No Food"
It had been three hours of flytime, and I couldn’t wait any longer. I wanted to eat. The last food I’d had was pizza and beer at 1pm in Santiago Airport. It was now 1am local time, twelve hours later.
When the cabin crew and food carts had come round earlier, I had noticed that not everyone was receiving a meal. The crew had lists highlighted in orange and were asking passengers in specific seat numbers for their names. The stewardess served the lady next to me in the aisle seat, and then waited for her colleague to be finished serving to move to the next row.
I had already taken my earphones off in anticipation, and I enquired without trying to sound too self-entitled.
“Do you have anything on your list for seat 5K?” I asked.
“No,” she says, “and these are the latest lists.”
“I paid for food,” I say. I think about showing the Vueling App to show that there is food listed, but it’s not worth it. We’re on a LEVEL plane anyway, and it seems like their own rules reign here.
She compromises with “I can’t give you food or drinks, but I can give you a glass of water.”
Oh great, a glass of water. A 13 hour flight with a glass of water. Woop-di-f***ing-do! Of course, I say yes.
I enquire if I can buy food there and then, and I’m told no. They just have the meals for the people that have paid for them apparently (although they don’t seem to have mine).
But I am assured, categorically 100% assured, that after the food service for the pre-paid meals, they will be coming back to sell food and drink on another run.
It’s now three hours in, and that turned out to be a lie. What kind of airline, I think, doesn’t want to make extra revenue by selling food/drink and duty free? What cabin crew doesn’t want to make a better wage by earning commission on their sales? Quite frankly, it baffles me.
They’ve turned off the lights and I can’t see the team working in the dark with headlamps. When the lady in the aisle seat takes a fortunate toilet break, I decide to go looking. Of course, I find two stewardesses behind the mystical curtained area gossiping away. I ask if I can order food and finally it’s an affirmative.
Lasagne, cookies and a Coke go down like a treat and it’s €12.50 which is pretty decent. LEVEL sell food and drink packages for €35 but admittedly that does include a 2nd meal in the morning and a choice of alcoholic drinks.
The LEVEL Computer Says No
The LEVEL system just doesn't want you buying Food, Drink or Duty Free - what sort of airline wants added sales?
Of course, on a Norwegian Airlines plane you can swipe your card on the entertainment system and order direct from your seat. LEVEL seem to have the same system, or at least a similar one. But there’s an icon in the top right with a card and a cross over it, and everytime I touch the ‘Shop’ or ‘Eat’ tabs on the system, it tells me they are closed.
When I had picked up my lasagne from the magical land of microwaves and gossiping stewardesses, they told me that was being tested and didn’t work. Two years into operations and the system still doesn’t work. Madness.
In fact the technological inadequacies for passengers on board that Airbus A330 were stunning. The IAG Group website claims that the overall strategy of LEVEL is “building the customer-centric, technologically-enabled airline business model of the future.”
I checked out the Wi-Fi too with the intention of not using it. The system explains it’s as simple as turning on Wi-Fi on your device and then choosing one of the options. That would be pretty cool having Wi-Fi in the skies, if it worked. Hitting on the Wi-Fi on my Samsung S9 Phone just took it to a blank page. It tries to navigate to shop.flylevel.com, so I did it independently. Nothing, nada, niet.
To figure out what plans and pricing they have, I’ve tried to navigate to the page tonight. I just get a big banner thanking me for flying LEVEL airlines. Cheers everyone, it was definitely all your pleasure.
Additionally every time the PA announcement comes on, I have to stifle a smile. Normally, the screen will state something like “PA in progress” or “Customer Announcement”. Every time the LEVEL PA comes on, it says “painprogress.action”. That is very true – I would love to take some action from this very painful progress of flying from Santiago to Barcelona. Potentially by going back in time and booking another carrier.
At least the entertainment works. I spend the night, being a bad plane sleeper as I mentioned, binging. The selection is not great but I still get through a movie I haven’t heard of called “Bad Times at the El Royale”. Then I move onto the live action version of “Dumbo”, the X-Men film “Logan”, “Tolkien” based on JRR Tolkien’s early life, and half of “Toy Story 3” before it’s time to land.
But enjoy it while it lasts. The LEVEL website says entertainment will become a chargeable extra after January 2020. I’ve never heard of an airline charging for films and TV shows, and I pray it doesn’t catch on.
Building The Service-Less Airline of the Future
The A330 with its four central seats and LEVEL logos on the Entertainment System
When the morning comes, the same happens. 11 Hours into the flight, the team come round and serve the pre-paid passengers their breakfast. They don’t come back to upsell drinks and food to the rest of the passengers, and a hour or so later, it would be landing time and too late.
I don’t quite understand how everyone else has made it through 13 hours with no food and drink. Admittedly, many of them have slept through the night which helped stave away the hunger pains.
By the time we are landing, I’ve reminiscing on the whole nightmare, sorry, experience. When I spoke to the stewardesses to get my lasagne, they seemed pleasant but the whole staffing is just subpar. The team had a horrible jumpsuit thing going on with bits of green and blue that made them look like they were baggage handlers keeping warm. It did not come across as professional. Yet, on their Instagram, they all have smart shirts and jackets. It’s flywithlevel by the way, as I’m sure you’ll want to go and follow it!
They had a lot of cabin crew onboard, similar numbers to Norwegian I would have thought, but everything moved at a snail’s pace. Norwegian inflight customer service puts LEVEL to shame, many times over.
There were a few other things that could have been better. I was sandwiched between a girl in front that kept moving and bashing her seat (who later turned out to be my saviour) and a crying baby behind. The premium seats were just infront of me after a curtained section so we had to go way back in the plane for toilets – laughably, by 3 hours in, there was no water in the bathroom taps so I couldn’t wash the soap off and ended up with sticky hands for hours.
The safety video looks like an IKEA or Uniqlo advert, more about minimalist style than informing you of any safety.
The flight number in the end was IB2606 which makes no sense. Why have an Iberia flight number when all the crew are LEVEL and they normally use LV?
And just to top it all off, storms had fallen in Spain for the past few days so we had a decidedly bumpy and bad landing into Barcelona. Granted, the rain is not the pilot’s fault. But the constant acceleration and deceleration they were doing from the cockpit felt like a bad driver bumping the brake too hard.
All in all, I was relieved to get off that flight, and at least it was over.
Or at least I thought it was.
Losing A Plane's Worth of Baggage
When we got to the baggage carousel, I had a bad feeling. I just knew that something would happen to my luggage. I have never ever had a single piece of baggage not arrive, and for that I’ve been lucky. But I somehow knew that luck was to change.
There was an initial announcement that our luggage would be slightly delayed, but then some luggage came out on Carousel 15 that we were given, and people took it away. Then there was another announcement that the bag handlers had to move on to other flights and then would come back to ours. I guess LEVEL doesn’t pay as much as some of the other airlines to have their luggage operated. Plus, with the big sisters of Vueling and Iberia in full swing at Barcelona airport, I’m sure they get priority.
The hours wore on and I spent the time lying down near the belt in a corner. There was no point stressing about the whole thing. A few other flights used the conveyor belt over the hours we were there, but at least we could see some of the luggage coming out.
That turned out not to be the case. Quite a few passengers had already gone to queue at lost baggage by that point, but we found out that none of the bags had come off. All the bags we had seen were from other flights.
An angry crowd formed around the lost baggage area. 90% of the people on that flight seemed to be coming home to Barcelona, most did not speak English, so I couldn’t tell exactly what was going on. I can tell you that a whole crowd of Spaniards can get quite feisty! Before long a small group had “broken into” the back areas of the office, and security were deployed to lock the door and keep anyone else out.
I tried to fathom what had gone on. I received two different answers from the staff. The first was that they couldn’t get on the plane because the weather was too bad. This seemed strange since all the other flights after us had got their baggage.
The second excuse was that they couldn’t physically get into the plane. I’m not sure exactly why they couldn’t. Either way, they were adamant that the plane was still here and the luggage was still on it.
I’ll never find out what happened to everyone’s luggage that day.
A Queue Of Angry Spaniards
I had a flight to catch to London with Easyjet in a couple of hours. This was painless as always with Easyjet. Two easy hours with efficient service and we were back home. I had paid a mere £50 for the flight including two big bags that I no longer had with me.
But there, at that time, I had two choices. Wait for my luggage in Barcelona and forfeit my plane to London, or leave for London without bags. The additional problem was now that finding out what had gone on, and joining one of the angry crowds of Spaniards had meant losing a place in the queue.
A queue that was hundreds of people long by this point.
In sheer desperation, I spotted at the front of the queue the girl who had sat infront of me. The girl who bashed the chair all flight, getting up and down, and even sitting on the floor infront of her chair (as she had one of the extra legroom chairs).
A girl, who it turned out, spoke English. And a girl who after some pleading from me about my flight back to London, spoke to the others at the front of the queue and let me push it. 299 Spaniards going home to Barcelona, and 1 incredibly lucky English guy at the front of that queue.
The morale of that story is you can’t judge somebody purely based on how frickingly annoying they are bashing chairs for 13 hours!
I filled in a PIR – a lost baggage form – and made a dash across terminals. I had to cross from Terminal 1 to Terminal 2C. I had also been given a token by Iberia/LEVEL to use for food because of the issues with the bags but they hadn’t put an amount on them. I waved them uselessly around Terminal 2C and nobody knew what they were.
Eventually, one food vendor said they could take it for a value of 6 Euros, so at least I got a coffee and a muffin, and twenty minutes of peace on a seat. It wasn’t quite the two meals I should have got onboard, and my bags, and a “customer-centric” experience, but it was something.
LEVEL's "Aftercare"
In the end, the upside is that after a very stressful 30 hours, a few days later I got my bags back.
I went through a typical LEVEL experience, one that at that point, I had grown to expect. The Spanish number they had given me to get updates on my bag did not work, even when using the international dialing code for Spain. I tried to locate a number I could ring from England to no avail.
However, the online tracking did work, and after a day I saw that one (but not two) of my bags was due to be delivered to Heathrow. All communication I got was by text and informed me that it was due to be on a BA flight at around 1pm that day. Unremarkably, it didn’t make that flight, but I was happy when it managed to make a BA flight later that evening.
It was still only one piece of luggage at that point. The other piece still said that “tracking continued” but it couldn’t be located.
I wanted to enquire further and found a London based number for Iberia baggage. I rang it to find an automated service that kept hanging me up. I eventually managed to get through to somebody on the UK team that told me to use the automated service that kept hanging me up.
When I told them this nugget of information, they then told me that my luggage had not been found yet, despite having the online tracking that said one bag was on its way to Heathrow. I don’t know how many lies IAG Group make up a day, but based on my experience and mathematical extrapolation, it must be thousands!
In the end when the one bag arrived on the BA flight to Heathrow and got handed over to their courier City Bags, it had magically transformed into two bags. City Bags were great, but to avoid any other massive f***ups with deliver, a very happy but tired customer picked up 2 bags from their Heathrow location.
LEVEL in Conclusion: The Worst Airline Or Just The Worst Flight?
So after a week to put the trauma behind me, what can I say?
Well kiwi.com were pretty efficient, accepting my claim for the second bag being paid for but not being allowed onboard, and have spoken to LEVEL. I still don’t know if that was LEVEL or Kiwi’s fault but kiwi.com are refunding around £85 that I paid them for the bag.
LEVEL says that with them “you are in control, with simple options to create the in-flight experience you want, whatever your budget”. This clearly wasn’t the case on the one flight I took with them.
I have no idea what happened to a plane load of luggage, but I hope that everyone in Barcelona got their luggage back. Though I hate people in the service industry getting blamed for things outside their control, there’s a small part of me that hopes that angry Spanish mob gave them hell.
I can say that every flight is different, and whilst I may think LEVEL is the worst airline in the world, this is based on my experience.
I can tell you that this was the worst flight I’ve ever had, and it would take a lot to get me (kicking and screaming) back on a LEVEL flight. “A lot” here means an act of terrorism of a free ticket, but I’m taking hand luggage only!
From an outsider looking at IAG’s strategy, LEVEL looks like a failed experiment. When the new chairman of IAG steps up in March 2020 and Willie Walsh retires, I say shut the doors and close the little fetish that was LEVEL.
Until then, if you fancy flying LEVEL, good luck! You’ll need all you can get… and more.
Further Resources
Click on each tab below for resources to plan your trip
- If you dare, you'll find Level tickets to be booked at their website: www.flylevel.com
- You can find LEVEL's flight attendents dressed nicely in suit's at their Instagram (though not on my plane flight it seems)
- More info about International Airlines Group can be found here.
- I booked tickets for the flight through kiwi.com
- They also have a mobile app on the Google Store and for Apple
- Admittedly, they messed up my 2nd bag and didn't tell me I was flying with LEVEL (ticket said Vueling operated by Iberia). However, they did deal with my refund quickly, and they saved me a couple of hundred pounds on the flight compared to every other seller and airline I looked at.
4 comments
Last chapter showed twice on my phone? Thanks for sharing Dave, nightmare!
Thanks for reading Graham, and for spotting that problem – I’ve now fixed it so it has the ending it should have had!
Well, it’s 2023, and my luggage has been lost for 8 day. I call everyday and every agent tells me a different story. I booked directly through Vueling. The second to last update was my bags made it to San Fran (From Barcelona), today “the bags that made it there, looked like yours but aren’t”????? WHAT??? How? They are electronic AND they have my info. My question: Well who receives your bags in SFO and how can I reach them? “We don’t have anyone specifically….” My response: You should absolutely be appalled at yourself for continuing to work for a shitty, fraudulent company. Shame on you. This is not ok.
Glad you got your bags back…They also charged $1400 for baggage fees for my husband and kids (which we disputed with our CC) and were mad every time I asked for more water on a 12 hour flight. Terrible.
Hope you’ve got the bags back by now.
If not, sorry about the experience.