[transaerosucks]

THE TRANSAERO STORY

I flew Transaero from Toronto, Canada to Almaty, Kazakhstan through Moscow this summer. First of all, Transaero delayed our flight by 6hrs in Domodedovo (because of the thick smog, ok, understandable) but when we finally boarded the plane to Almaty, they left 11 passengers in Domodedovo because the plane wasn't large enough (thank God I wasn't one of those 11 people). We get to Almaty at 12am, and only 8 people get their luggage. The airline "lost" or "left" the luggage of almost 2o passengers back in Moscow. The representative for Transaero magically disappeared from the airport when people tried making complaints to customer service. The airline staff refused to give us lost luggage forms, they handed out blank pieces of paper so people could write down the description of their luggage, but no official papers (which as some of you may know, if you don't file and OFFICIAL complaint, the moment you walk out of there, they are no longer liable for your things), so the blank papers were a farce.

I videotaped this... anyway, after 17 people left, there were 3 of us left with foreign passports, I kept demanding an official lost luggage form, the woman in charge finally gave up and gave me one, explaining that she just didn't want, and I quote "Did not want to go through the trouble of processing complaints from all those other passengers because there were too many of them". I filled out my form, got my luggage the next day, thank God, because I made a huge deal about it.

PART 2

I'm flying out of Almaty to Moscow 2 months later, I wanted to bring a guitar with me. The TRANSAERO staff at registration made me pay $25USD to them under the table to have my guitar with me on the flight.

PART 3

I'm flying out of Moscow 3 months later to go back to Toronto. I got to registration 1hr early. It was a hellish mess. They had 5 different flights boarding through the same registration, with one useless attendant standing there unable to help any of the frustrated passengers with information on what line to stand in. I stood in this crowd of people for 3hrs, was finally escorted by security to registration because my scheduled registration was ending and I was going to be late for my plane (because of the unbelievable mess transaero made out of their line-ups). The lady at registration tells me I have no time and sends me to pay $50USD as she tells me for "overweight luggage", I run over to the cashier, the lady makes me pat 50EURO, I told them I could move my things into 2 different bags so they wouldn't be overweight, they lied to me saying there was no time and made me pay them anyway. I got to my respective gate and found out that my plane would be boarding in 1hr so, I had time to move my luggage so it wouldn't be overweight, the Transaero staff just lied to me to scam some $$$ off of me.

Ok, so the point is, DO NOT FLY THIS ****TY AIRLINE. I filed a complaint, officially in mid February, they of course, did not reply. So what I'm doing as I promised them I would is writing about it on forums such as this and publicizing the videos I took of their misconduct.

TRANSAERO SUCKS!!!!

AEROSVIT IS HORRENDOUS, in 2006 they left my father's dog in Kiev without telling him. So he flew to CAnada and found out in the airport that they never boarded the dog. I filed complaints with animal rights groups, in the middle of the night got an anonymous call from thugs hired by aerosvit that threatened our family that if we didn't stop talking to press that we would never see our dog again. A week later and $2000 spent, we finally received our great dane from kiev on another flight.

As a Russian Canadian I will advise you to stay the hell away from Russian/Ukrainian Airlines, they may be cheaper to fly but they are in most part operated by thugs, and if you they lose your luggage, lose your pets, delay your flights, etc, do not even dream of compensation, you'll be lucky if you will get your things back.

If you want to fly reputable airlines overseas I would suggest KLM, and Lufthansa, with whom I have not had problems.

Cheers!