Myself and my fiancée travelled to Gran Canary on Tue 15th of June 2010 for a
weeks holiday from Prestwick with Ryanair, to return on the 22nd.On the evening of the 16th i was contacted by my family to inform me that my father had passed away that day and that i had to return home as soon as possible.

The next available direct flight to Scotland was not until Saturday the 19th and we were informed by our hotel that the best option would be to go to the airport and try to book a flight to the nearest hub airport (Madrid) as soon as possible. Upon arrival at the airport we were told that the next available flight was at 6am on the 17th on one of Spanairs regular business hopper services, but as the flight was full was would only be able to book on 1st class at a cost of 505euros per passenger. Being unable to afford such costs at last minute we contacted my family who were told to contact spanairs call centre to make the reservation on our behalf.When they contacted the call center they queried the high costs and were told that as the flight was only one way policy states it has to be 1st class. They booked the tickets regardless as at this time of family tragedy and grief cost was not a concern.

Upon boarding the flight i was astonished to see that in fact the flight was not full and there were plenty of spaces in economy class. Now since returning i have tried to find this "policy" of spanair forcing customers to purchase 1st class on a one way flight advertised/ stated anywhere on our site and have yet to find any mention of it. As such i feel spanair has done nothing but lie to me and my family during a time when sympathy and helpfulness would have been better served.

My son was travelling alone to visit ihis aunt who lives in Grand Canary. We bought tickets online from Vancouver to Frankfurt return and from Frankfurt to Grand Canary. The second part of the journey, from Frankfurt to Grand Canary, was to be on Spanair. I received email confirms from all the airlines, Spanair included. When my son got to Frankfurt he was told that he did not have a booking, this depsite the copy of the email confirmation. He was toild that a email had been sent to us (did not receive one) and that a text message had been sent (to a land line-nice job). Spanair would not honour the booking but were willing to sell him a ticket for over 2000euro, 5 times the price of the confirmed ticket price.
He had to spend an extra night in Frankfurt and purchase a new ticket at extra cost but not the 2000euros spanair had asked for.
Spanair put the blame squarely on us...I've travelled for 30 years and never had this happen...when is a confirm booking not a confirm booking?

Last year as we were visiting my parents and the kid we are sponsuring at school.we had many things spoiled due to bad management and long time delay, and at the end we´re refared to air france thereby we must fly to France, then France Dakar (Senegal) instead of Düsseldorf to Banjul and as we were booking we booked Düss-Mad, Mad -bjl(the Gambia).From Dakar Senegal we landed almost Midnight and we have to take a transport to Farafenni were we spent the rest of the night in a hotel.the next day we took another transport to banjul. On our return it was the booked route but the bagages are spoiled very badly and my wife`s bag came late aswell and damaged .therefore I wrote to you before via the travel agent and nothing is done .Our over night, brakefast and transport costs from Dakar to Banjul which we have to take from our own pockets .
We are looking forward to your agrement and conponsations
Cham Seedy and Plate-Cham Agnes.

My spouse and I booked a Spanair round trip flight from Frankfurt to Seville. The outward flight was fine, but the return was to put it mildly, a bumpy flight, not just because things went wrong; this can happen on any flight these days, but because the way we were dealt with by the airline staff and because they simply were not honest with us.

Our return flight was canceled because of mechanical problems with the plane. We were told to retrieve our luggage and proceed to the ticket counter of Spanair in the Seville airport for rebooking. After waiting about an hour in line, which by the way was utter chaos, since the staff allows others to interrupt the work they are doing with one customer to answer questions and deal with problems from other customers who come to the counter without queuing. This of course means they have to multitask and right then we knew there would be problems. When we made it to the counter, the attend first said the only thing they could do was load us on a bus for a two-hour ride to Jerez where we would then catch a late flight to Barcelona and eventually connect to a Lufthansa flight to Frankfurt. This would have gotten us to our final destination in Germany in the early hours of the morning as we still had to take a two-hour train ride. We then asked if we could stay over in Seville and take the same flights we had booked for the day of the cancellation. The attendant said she could book us on the same morning flight out of Seville with a connecting flight to Frankfurt but with only a 50-minute time window to catch the flight. I said that I had originally opted against that flight because of frequent delays. I had booked a later afternoon flight with a 3-hour window. The attendant assured us that this wasn't necessary and insisted that we would be foolish not to take the earlier connection, because 50 minutes was plenty of time to make the connection. Figuring that because Spanair and Lufthansa are Star Alliance partners, we took the attendants recommendation. She printed out the confirmation and we were off to spend one more night in Seville.

The next morning we arrived at the airport at 8am and were the first customers in line when the check-in counter opened. The attendant book us to Barcelona but said that she could not give us a boarding pass in Seville and that we would have to get a boarding pass at the Lufthansa counter in Barcelona. I said that we had been issued boarding passes the day before for both flight. Her response was that there was nothing she could do about it because the "computer" would not allow her to issue the boarding pass. So, off we went to await the flight to Barcelona, which arrived from Barcelona 30minutes late. We suspected that we were in trouble. However, once the flight left, the pilot assured us that because of a strong tail wind we would arrive on time. Indeed, we arrived in Barcelona 5 minutes late and we figured we had plenty of time to catch the flight. However, rather than disembark on a jetway we were taken on a 15-minute bus ride, which began about 10 minutes after we boarded the bus. We were taken to the far end of the Barcelona airport--Model 1 and Lufthansa, the Star Alliance partner of Spanair, left from Module 4, which meant we had to run through a very grounded airport. We arrived five minutes before the flight was to leave and were told that the flight had closed and that our seats had been given to stand-by passengers. The agent said that he would book us on the next flight, which of course was the original flight with a 3-hour window and that he would book us into Business class. He also said we had access to the VIP Lounge of Spanair. However, he was unable to issue boarding passes at the time and that we would have to wait until the next Frankfurt flight opened. We went to the lounge and because I have a United (Star Alliance) Gold Card, we assumed that we would have easy access to the lounge. Not so. The agent said we could not go in without a boarding pass. My spouse then explained the situation in English to the agent. The agent then proceeded to call Lufthansa to check if we had been booked on the flight. She spoke in Spanish, not knowing, that I am a fluent speaker of the language. She told the agent on the line that she was uninterested in stories that passengers tell her and in fact repeated this line again before hanging up. I just looked at her as I was not in a mood to have an argument. She admitted us to the lounge.

We made it to Frankfurt more or less on time, but when we went to pick up our luggage, which had been fitted with a priority label (because of my Gold Card Status!) in Seville, it hadn't arrived. We went to the Lufthansa counter and after checking the agent informed us that it hadn't been loaded in Seville ! What is more, there were only six passengers in Seville who had checked baggage. The rest had carry on bags only. While in Barcelona I searched in vain to find a Spanair supervisor to lodge my complaint about the inappropriate booking in Seville. I was given a major run-around. There was no Spanair supervisor to be found. When we arrived at our destination in Germany, I tried looking up a complaint service for Spanair, and so far, I have been unsuccessful had locating anyone to speak with about the very bad service we were given and so far, no bags!

Never again we will fly Spanair!