My 75 year old mother traveled from New York, USA to Montpellier, France to visit me the summer of 2018. Basically, her flights were a total disaster, and the experience taught me a lot about a few specific companies with questionable business practices, as well as some general lessons about low-cost international travel.
My mom decided to visit somewhat late in the game, so by the time we got around to purchasing the tickets, prices were quite high. I went to Kayak to find the best prices (no plug for Kayak, just stating the facts) and the only reasonable options that came up were via a company called Kiwi.com. I had never heard of them, so I googled a bit and found some bad reviews (and some good reviews), but nothing that seemed overly out of the ordinary for a travel company. The tickets they were proposing were an unusual combination of airlines, in my case Norwegian Air, an airline I had never heard of before, from Newark, NJ to Paris Orly and Hop! / Air France, the standard for French travel, from Orly to Montpellier. Normally when I see a mix of airlines like that I worry what will happen if you miss a connection, but somewhere on the Kiwi website I saw that they guarantee connections and I figured that Air France’s participation meant that it was OK, so I took a chance and bought the tickets. I probably should have looked into it more, but I wanted to get the tickets and the next best option was a lot more expensive.
At the time I didn’t understand Kiwi’s business model, but now I understand every detail. Kiwi specializes in combining tickets from different airlines that don’t normally cooperate to get low cost tickets. Their offices are scattered over Eastern Europe and several other emerging nations. Normally, when you mix airlines like that, you risk having problems if a flight is delayed and you miss a connection, but Kiwi has what they call the “Kiwi guarantee” - basically, they promise to take care of you if there are delayed or cancelled flights or lost luggage. They give you a UK phone number in case of problems (though I doubt I ever spoke to someone in the UK) and state that they are available 24/7 to help. In principle, this is an interesting business model with lots of potential, but everything rests on the quality of the “Kiwi guarantee” and the probability that you will have problems with a leg of your journey. As we will see, my mom had problems with both on her journey.
I also didn’t know Norwegian Air very well (I don’t include links to their website as I have no intention of providing publicity for them - google them if you are interested). They are presumably based in Norway, but their phone costumer service representatives often appeared to be elsewhere. They specialize in low-cost, no-frills long-haul flights. They are essentially the international travel equivalent of Ryan Air or Southwest (though I have never had nearly as many problems with either of these as we had with Norwegian). Other airlines presumably in their category include XL and WOW, though I make no comparison with these airlines.
Right away, my mother had problems with her flights from Newark, NJ to France. Her Norwegian flight was delayed, increasingly so as the time of the flight approached. It is still not 100% clear why, but the word on the street is that they were waiting for other delayed passengers from some other Norwegian Air flight who were connecting in Newark. When the flight finally left, they didn’t give my mother the option to purchase dinner on the plane. The passengers around her got a dinner, presumably because they had purchased dinner online before the flight, but my mother had troubling doing that when she was registering online and assumed that she would be able to purchase food on the flight. The airline crew even refused to give my mother coffee, offering her water with reluctance after another passenger protested regarding her treatment.
In any case, the end result is that my mother was delayed by several hours getting in to Paris. Upon arrival, she thought there was some chance of making her connection, so she picked up all her luggage and hustled across the airport (she is 75) in an attempt to make the connection, but ended up just missing the registration deadline. Air France said they would be happy to book her on the next and only remaining flight to Montpellier for 400€! At the time we found this shocking, but now I understand that Air France has no commercial relationship with Norwegian Air or Kiwi, so they were under no obligation to help us just because we didn’t make it to the counter on time. Due to the time difference between the US and France, my mother didn’t call me from Newark and I only started hearing about these problems when my mom was already frantic at the Air France counter.
When she called me I remembered that there was some sort of “Kiwi guarantee” and found the UK phone number for Kiwi on the ticket. My mom being in the airport with limited connectivity and a useless US telephone, I did most of the calling. The first time I called, the voice activated system asked me a few questions to locate the reservation record and then put me on hold before going completely silent. After waiting a bit, I assumed I had gotten cut off, so I hung up and redialed. The second time around, there was no sound whatsoever - no voice activated system, nothing, just silence. I waited a bit, hung up and tried again.
This went on like this for a while until finally I decided to just not hang up despite the silence. Eventually some sort of alternative call system connected that allowed information entry using the dial pad instead of just voice. I responded to this and was again put on hold. After a wait of around 20 minutes, I finally got a human on the line. Based on the accent, I doubt seriously that they were in the UK. It wouldn’t surprise me if I never spoke to two Kiwi representatives in the same country as every time I called, I got a different accent.
The person on the line, and in fact all the Kiwi people I spoke to, was very polite, as was I. I explained the issue and they said they would forward it to the “Kiwi guarantee” department who would respond via email within 2-4 hours with an alternative flight proposition. They told me that my mother should stay at the airport until alternative travel arrangements were made. At the time, it was around 4 or 5PM French time, so this didn’t seem unreasonable. I said OK and hung up, but continued to call every hour or so to see if things were advancing.
Around the 3 hour mark post my initial phone call, I started becoming worried. The last flight from Orly to Montpellier had already left, so I saw no reason why my 75 year old mother should sit around the airport. I informed Kiwi of this, as well as of her age and the fatigue of the trip, but they insisted she should wait so I told her to hold on.
At the 4 hour mark, I was told that the wait time for an alternative flight proposition would be 4-6 hours instead of 2-4 hours as I was initially told. I asked again if she could just go to a hotel, but they insisted she wait.
At the 6 hour mark, there was still no word from Kiwi. I decided to start looking for hotels, but by this time almost all the hotels close to the airport were booked and the prices had soared. I, stupidly, decided to continue waiting.
At around the 8 hour mark(!) and after much desperate insistence on my part, Kiwi finally made a proposition for a flight the next morning at around 9AM. I asked about hotel accommodation and they initially offered 75€ and told me to make my own reservation as they were unable to do so for some reason, probably due to the advanced hour this was all happening. When I laughed at how little this was for Paris on a busy summer night at 1AM, they said there was also some food and transportation money that would bring the total to 150€. Even though this didn’t cover the entire cost of the hotel and food, I said OK and my mother was in bed by 2AM French time (she had left for the airport in Newark, NJ at around 9PM Eastern Standard Time, almost 24 hours earlier). Unfortunately, my mother had to be up around 6AM to make her flight the next morning, but she managed to get some sleep. As for hotel costs, Kiwi finally reimbursed the 150€ about 3 weeks after her intended return flight on August 18, 2018.
The return trip made the outbound flight look like a first class ticket. As my mother was boarding her flight from Montpellier to Paris Orly, Norwegian Air sent a text message to her US cell phone (that she magically received) alerting her that her flight from Paris to the US was canceled. No explanation why was given, but they gave a generic number to call to fix the situation. My mother boarded her Hop! flight to Paris while I immediately called Kiwi. After similar phone connection difficulties as for the outbound trip, I eventually got hold of someone. I informed them of the problem, and they said they would forward it to the “Kiwi guarantee” team, but they wanted us to find out if Norwegian Air was proposing alternative options. I decided it was futile to point out that the whole idea of the “Kiwi guarantee” was that we shouldn’t have to make our own alternative travel arrangements, so I said thanks and hung up.
I next called Norwegian Air. They were even more difficult to get a hold of than Kiwi. All told, I had to call about 5 times before getting through and spent a total of around 50 minutes on hold before I was able to speak to someone. As with Kiwi, the person on the phone was kind enough, but, apart from proposing that my mother leave on a flight 4 days after her initially scheduled flight, was of little use. The person informed me that Norwegian would be setting up a hotline for this specific canceled flight and that we would receive a text message within an hour with the number to call.
The hotline numbers, one Norwegian and one for the US, arrived a little more than an hour later via text message. I called both repeatedly, but was never ever able to get anyone to pick up. At one point, I just let it ring for about 20 minutes, but no one answered. I told my mother her best option was to see someone at the Norwegian counter in the Paris airport.
When she got to the counter at Paris Orly airport, she estimates that there were about 40 irate passengers waiting, all in the same situation. She waited and waited with no end in sight. After a long wait (hours), Norwegian eventually proposed to the entire group of passengers an alternative flight leaving from CDG (the other airport in Paris about a 40 minute drive away in no traffic) at 6AM the next morning. The entire group was transported by private bus to a hotel at CDG and given a free meal and lodging. At this point, I was pretty happy that Norwegian seemed to be doing what an airline should do in this situation - taking care of passengers and making reasonable alternative arrangements. Still, it was a bit odd that none of the passengers were given a precise itinerary or flight number. We also couldn’t find the corresponding flight online, but I assumed it was some sort of last minute arrangement. We all went to bed assuming it would work out the next morning…
The next morning, all the passengers were woken at 3AM for the flight only to be informed by hotel staff that there was no flight! It is not clear if there ever was a flight, but if there was, it was definitely canceled. All the passengers were told to contact the same hotline number, but as before, this was unreachable. Cell phones seemed to be having trouble at the hotel for some reason, so my mother had to convince hotel staff to let her call me on a hotel phone. No one was in an orange jumpsuit, but for my mom it sure felt like a very strange and worrisome situation given that she doesn’t speak a word of French, hadn’t spent any serious time in Paris in 40 years and had no one to turn to locally. To my knowledge, Norwegian airlines doesn’t even regularly fly out of CDG, which may have been why they dumped all the stranded passengers at that airport… In desperation, my mother called me at 4AM and informed me of the chaos. I immediately went to work again with Kiwi.
This time around Kiwi was harder than usual to get in contact with. Several times the call just cut off while I was on hold. I finally got a dreadful, crackly connection with someone with an Indian accent. I asked them to call me back, but they said they couldn’t do that. Apparently, during the night, Kiwi had proposed an alternative flight for my mom, but given the time of day, the weak internet connection my mom had (the hotel apparently only offered free WiFi in the lobby) and the fact that my mom was no longer looking for an email from Kiwi, she only found out about it after being woken up at 3AM for the supposed Norwegian flight. To make matters worse, the flight was out of Orly, took off less than 3 hours after she found out about it, and consisted of 3 flights - Paris to Portugal, Portugal to Boston, Boston to Newark - instead of being direct to Newark. By the time I had spoken to Kiwi, it was simply too late for my mom to make the flight even if she wanted to take it given the complexity and time needed to get her from CDG to Orly. I was told that we should wait (again!) and that we would be getting an alternative proposition from Kiwi at some unspecified later date.
To my surprise, the same Indian-sounding gentleman called me back about 30 minutes later on a much better telephone line and had two wonderful propositions for us: (1) we could get a refund for the return flight, presumably somewhere around 300€, or (2) we could book ourselves an alternative flight and ask to be reimbursed by Kiwi. The first option is laughable as bare minimum one-way flight options to New York were running around $800. The second option had me very worried as we were already due 150€ from Kiwi for the hotel accommodations on the outbound flight, and now they were asking us to shell out another >$800 without a clear path to reimbursement. Nevertheless, given that we had no other option, we made an entirely new reservation on another low-cost airline for ~$1000 (better options being in the >$2000 range) with a 7 hour layover in Iceland to get my mom home. Thankfully, that flight went well and my mother arrived back in the US on the 20th of August, 2018.
My mother and I submitted two claims, one to Kiwi for the hotel and replacement ticket and another to Norwegian for compensation related to delayed and canceled flights. The Kiwi claim took around 3 weeks to be processed, but they did eventually reimburse us for the 150€ in hotel accommodations plus the cost of the alternative return flight.
The Norwegian claim went entirely differently. Under European law, passengers are due 600€ for any canceled (long-haul?) flight and 600€ for any long-haul flight delayed more than 3 hours. We submitted a claim for the outbound delayed flight and the two canceled return flights (her normally scheduled flight plus the second phantom return flight from CDG). In theory, this should have entitled us to 1800€ in compensation.
Norwegian took an entire 7 weeks to respond to our claim. When they did respond, they completely ignored the delayed outbound flight and made no mention of the second cancelled phantom flight. They refused to provide us any compensation for the canceled flight (they did offer to reimburse us for the difference between the reimbursement for the cancelled flight, which was presumably already sent to Kiwi, and the cost of our alternative flight, but the 600€ damages reward is normally on top of any costs related to making alternative travel arrangements) claiming that “your flight was cancelled due to an event, which constitutes extraordinary circumstances”. Basically, if I understand their response, they or someone else thought their plane had a defect (no details were given on the nature of the suspected defect), for which an inspection was necessary, but when they carried out the inspection, no defective part was found and so they are not required to compensate passengers for the cancelled flight. If they had found a defective part, they would have compensated, but apparently having not found a defective part gives them the right to dump 75 year old ladies at some random hotel in a different airport in a country whose language she doesn’t speak without any obligation to compensate! I don’t know about the legal details of all this, but the whole thing smells very fishy to me!
I persisted via email with Norwegian on the details of this whole debacle, but they claimed the outbound flight was only 2 hours and 9 minutes later, so no compensation, and that for the return flight they had no knowledge of the phantom flight out of CDG that never was. It seems very hard to believe that the airline had no knowledge of ~40 passengers being transported to CDG for a flight, but when I evoked this point Norwegian basically told me to get lost.
We, along with a large group of other passengers, are currently planning on taking this up with the National Enforcement Body for EU regulations in France.
Basically, do not fly Norwegian and be aware of what you are getting into when booking with Kiwi.com. Norwegian clearly seems like a bad actor here, with very mysterious and troubling patterns of delayed and canceled flights, as well as dreadful in flight and on ground service. I would not be surprised if they implode in the near future. Even if they don’t, I would never consider using them again.
It is less clear if Kiwi is a deliberate bad actor or just poorly managed. They did eventually reimburse us for the travel issues my mother had, but their “24/7 promise” should definitely be taken with great caution as they are very hard to reach on the phone and once you get someone, they hand all problems off to a mysterious department you cannot talk to directly. For both outbound and return trips, the response times for making alternative arrangements were too long to be reasonable and useful, much longer than one would generally have with in airport airline personnel. You definitely shouldn’t attempt to use them unless you know how to get good telephone and internet connections at every stopover on your journey. A 75 year old woman with limited technical skills traveling on Kiwi is out of the question and downright dangerous!
More generally, this case reveals the “wild, wild west” that is low-budget international travel nowadays. Kiwi.com is somewhere in Eastern Europe. Norwegian Air is presumably in Norway, but at least one representative I spoke to was in the Ukraine. My mom lives in New York and I live in France. Under these situations involving many different countries, passengers have limited recourse to force companies to respond to grievances and have to just trust that they will act reasonably. Given the high demand for flights and relatively limited consequences for being a bad actor, there is a lot of room for nefarious behavior. If you can pay more for a standard airline, you are probably getting value for your money.