Kudos to Avianca

Kudos to Avianca - South America's 3rd largest airline, which is also currently in bankruptcy - for getting extra creative in their methods of extracting cash from their customers. This wasn't out first rodeo when it comes to dealing with budget airlines of dubious morality, but it was a new one.

Despite already having paid extra for seat 10F when making our booking, upon checking in this morning we found that all the F seats had magically transformed to K seats, and we'd been moved to 10E. No worries though, if you want to sit in 10K (or any other window seat) it will just cost 5x what you already paid* for the disappeared premium seating. [Insert your own potentially inappropriate joke about kidnapping and extortion in Colombia here].

This is so absurd that we're honestly more impressed by the creativity and gall involved than angry about having to sit in a middle seat en route to Riohacha. It's like that scene in Anchorman where Baxter eats the whole wheel of cheese. So bravo to you Avianca, bravo.....

*And no, your math isn't wrong there, nor did you look up the incorrect exchange rate. We paid a whopping €2 for 10F when booking, and were asked to pay approximately €10 for the new and improved 10K. Is this something even we could afford? Yes, of course. But it's the principle people, the principle!

Update: 10K Does Exist

Even after seven weeks in Bogotá, our Spanish is still pretty sure. For instance despite 100s of hours of Duolingo, we had no idea that Spanish didn't have the letters F, G, H, I or J. Could have sworn we'd seen them used at some point, but misremembering is one downsides of rampant alcoholism….

So, after all that public whining over minuscule sums of money, including several social media posts about it, when boarding the plane we discovered that sure enough, the K seats do in fact exist. But more importantly, the window seat in our row was one of the few empty ones, so we still got to stare longingly out the window (mostly at clouds) for the whole slight more than one-hour flight. Yay for us! We did appreciate the panoramic views of the coast so much on landing, that we included it as the first item on our list of 20 Reasons You Should Consider a Long-Term Stay in Riohacha (coming soonish)….