When Erin Levi booked a $179 one-way flight to Paris on Level airlines
for a friend's wedding a few weeks ago, she joked that it was too good
to be true. It was.
When the travel writer arrived at Newark Airport on Sept. 9, she couldn't find her gate -- it was as if her flight didn’t exist.
成都機票
Levi,
35, had entered her information into the airline's website to check in
hours earlier. She had run into an error message while trying to choose a
seat but otherwise hadn't noticed anything unusual. Unbeknownst to her,
Level's launch of its Newark to Paris service had been delayed until
Sept. 18, information that never appeared on the company's website.My
flight doesn't exist!" she texted her friends from the airport. "Airline
hasn't started transatlantic operations apparently!"
At the
airport, Levi couldn't find a counter or an agent for Level, so she
double-checked her ticket. It read "OpenSkies," a boutique airline
operated by British Airways. So she headed to their counter. It was
there, she said, she was told Level had delayed launching the Newark to
Paris route and was given a number to call.
By that point,
though, it was past midnight, and no one was answering the airline's
hotline. So Levi bought a new ticket on Wow airlines, hoping to be
reimbursed for the $319.98 she paid for the last-minute seat.
"I've
traveled to over 40 countries -- even on a handwritten ticket to
Uzbekistan -- and this has never happened before," Levi told ABC
News.But Levi is far from alone. Some Level customers said they never
received emails saying that their flights had been canceled, or found
out only upon arriving at the airport and being handed a sheet of paper.
Others received emails that went to junk mail. Almost everyone ABC News
spoke to said the company should have updated their website to reflect
the change in business plans or cancellations.
The Wall