Sabena was the Belgium flag carrier and one of the most economic airlines. Unfortunately, Sabena got busted in November, 2001. This airline is not existing anymore. Wondering what happened to all the previous bookings? Another airlines DAT - Delta Air Transport took over most of the flight handled by Sabena. Recently, a new name was given to the airline comprising of old Sabena flights with DAT - SN Brussels! Are you confused? I am more confused because they all exist as companies but nobody knows who is responsible for what.
I had booked my tickets from Brussels to Geneva with the DAT Airlines in November when the Sabena airlines went bankrupt and DAT was selling the flight slots at a dirt cheap price. Of course there was a risk involved - that of buying a ticket of a busted airlines. Owing to the sale maniac in me, I had bought the ticket well in advance for the month of March, 2002 along with 2 other friends.
Come March, we take an expensive taxi to reach the airport in the morning (as the underground do not work very early in the morning) to arrive 45 minutes before the scheduled time of departure. We did not see our flight name on the display board which was kind of strange. We joined the queue for obtaining the boarding passes. The flight was scheduled for 7:35 A.M and we were at the counter at 6:55 A.M. The moment we showed our ticket to the lady behind the counter, she looked at us in awe and shocked us by revealing that the flight was due to depart in 5 minutes and that we can not make it to the flight. We were stunned. We were instructed to contact the Ticketing and Sales office. With 5 minutes still left for the preponed flight, we rushed to the sales office of DAT to make the flight stop till we board (I remembered an instant where in a buddy had caught his flight just 5 minutes before the flight was to take off) since we only had a hand baggage each and nothing to check-in.
The lady at the Sales office said that we were late for the flight and that we could not board the flight. She took her own time in unnecessary arguments and the next thing we realized was that we had missed the flight. The flight departure timing was preponed without any communication to the customers. The lady at the DAT counter said that they did not have any contact information and thus they did not contact us which I believe is untrue. I do remember putting down my mobile no. while booking the tickets. I have never heard any airlines prepone their flight timings without communicating the same to the consumer.
’’The flight is full!’’ - This is what the lady distributing the boarding pass had said earlier ... hey how is this possible? It is very clear that our seats were given to someone else. DAT had not informed us at all. So we requested for the next flight and the arrogant lady behind the ticketing office counter simply said that she will put us on the waitlist for the next flight. Excuse me ? This triggered the passion of a consumer inside me and a quarrel ensued, almost everyone near us becoming witnesses to our quarrel. When I asked for a written report that we had missed our flight due to the preponing of the departure time, she first refused saying that she did not belong to DAT but SN Brussels. She started playing games with me with the different synonymous names of the airlines. I wouldn’t have minded that but she was not polite - she was sniffy. What was more surprising was that she refused to give in her name too. We were somehow given the boarding passes for the next flight which was 3 hours later and it was put as if she was doing a big favour. Our hotel was booked and we had to report there within the next 5 hours else we would have lost our bookings. A few of my friends were waiting for us in Switzerland. We had to ring them all up to make them aware of the change in our schedule. We lost some precious day time in Switzerland due to the DAT or SN Brussels or the offsprings of SABENA. We have written a complain to the Customer relations department ... yet to hear from them (I guess it takes time - experience with Lufthansa has taught me to be patient).
The food served was good but vegetarians be careful .. they declare fish sandwich as vegetarian - crazy lunatics!
I would not say that I do not recommend this airline.You should surely take any promotion deal with this airline - they come up with some really great deal. But still, think twice before flying with a busted airline.