Smartwings Abuse
 

Booked three flights on SmartWings (Dublin/Prague) ..and then our flights from Orlando, Florida where we reside. Booked hotels and then transportation etc for our european vacation in Feb 2005. Then 2 months later got an email from Smartwings saying out flights were cancelled, and we had to choose alternative days, and no refunds. Since we cannot travel on alternative days, we had to book flights on alternative airlines at three times the origional cost. Seems there is no recourse to this level of blant consumer abuse by some of these airlines. Complaints to SmartWings were returned with sharp, hostile language. Beware if booking on Smartwings (copies of emails are available to authenticate this).

Wow that is crazy, I was surfung that site too. Try this site next time, it looked pretty good. www.openjet.com

I'd do a credit card challenge.

Second Willtravel's suggestion. I just surfed the Smartwings website and read their 'Conditions of Carriage.' Specifically, Section 3. Transport Conditions - Escape Clause.

http://www.smartwings.net/en/travelinfo_gcc.php

While they reserve the right to cancell a flight, and while they also indicate that their liability to pay compensation is restricted to reimbursement of the airfare including taxes and charges, they do implicitly acknowledge that such compensation could or would be made in the event of 'nonimplementation of transport.' I'd say that cancelling a flight constitutes nonimplementation, and I bet your CC company will, too.

Good luck. Let us know what happens.

If you used a CC to pay for this then you can easily claim non-delivery of goods and services. It's a fairly straightforward procedure and no need to waste any energy with the company in question. Let your CC organization do that fighting for you.

Scary. I flew them over the summer, and had two great flights. Sorry to hear that they are pulling this kind of stuff.

Okay, so the OP goes through the credit card and gets his money back for the Smart Wings flight. Now what? He still has to pay 3X as much to get to Prague from Dublin.

I had a similar experience to Pglohan. I had booked a reservation for my wife and I to fly between Amsterdam and Prague for an upcoming trip. With less than a month to go before our trip and much of the rest of our trip prepaid (e.g. air reservations booked, Priceline hotels in both Prague and Amsterdam booked), SmartWings send me an e-mail saying they were sorry, but our flights are canceled due to their changing winter schedule.

As a result, all the less expensive advance fares are long gone and we were forced to purchase replacement reservations on KLM for twice the price.

Other travelers considering flying SmartWings should be forewarned!