Sara

Jun 20, 2025

Arrogant and dismissive airline

I had a connecting flight with Aegean, which turned out to be a nightmare very quickly due to their staff and overall (lack of) customer service towards passengers. We arrived to Athens too late, which caused us to miss the connecting flight. That wouldn't be such an issue, things happen, had they not been so incredibly arrogant and uninterested in helping! We arrived at midnight, the customer service counter was about to close. The agent working there saw a queue of 150 people from this flight coming to ask her for redirection or some sort of advice - we had all missed our connecting flights. She casually closed the counter in front of our faces and went home, saying her shift was over. Did not call someone else to take over, did not provide any directions, nothing. She packed her bag and simply walked off. (!!!) That was the beginning of an all-night nightmare. Then we spent the next 5 hours between 2 counters which we discovered on our own, walking all over the building: the lost luggage counter and the re-booking flight counter. Both were as miserable as you could imagine - the staff sleepy, slow, disengaged, unsure what to do to help... At the lost luggage counter the staff did not want to write us a PIR report (which is necessary to have to file a claim later), they just kept telling us to search for our bags every hour as the new flights kept arriving, they will probably show up in one of the rounds of baggage. WTH?! We keep doing that, still haven't found any of our 4 bags, and still were being denied the PIR report which we asked several times for. The man refused to open a case and give us a file number. At the re-booking counter, it took them 5-6 hours (literally) to re-book all of us to our destination flights. We kept standing in line bcd there were no chairs to sit, no ticketing system to take your number, nothing. If you didn't stand in line, you would have lost your spot. When we finally got to our turn, we received boarding passes for the next available flight that was scheduled to leave several hours later. When we finally arrived at the destination without our luggage, literally in the clothes we had on ourselves, the airport staff at destination told us that we needed to call Aegean and file a claim with them to retrieve our luggage. 10 long days later, and many many calls and emails to Aegean, I've had enough!! I opened the case with AirHelp to claim our losses and was able to find the luggage that had arrived on the 10th day at our destination. No one informed us, we simply went to the airport several times to physically search for them. There was no case number so the staff couldn't contact us - all of this is Aegean's fault for not labeling the bags. One of the bags was very damaged and the computer screen in it was shattered. It took almost 2 years, but I finally received my payout today from the airline for all this mess. It was an incredibly frustrating experience and the airline was blatantly dismissive and non-cooperative from the start. I have to thank AirHelp for their relentless pursuit of justice in my case and continuous support, they had to take legal actions against Aegean as they refused accountability up until the very last minute. I don't recommend this airline if you plan on taking connecting flights, or travel somewhere very far, and certainly don't book it without flight insurance.