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Passengers upset about airline's summer delays, find ways to fight back

BOSTON — For many in our area, Azores Airlines is the only option for flying to see loved ones, and it's plagued with delays and consumer complaints. Boston 25 News took an in-depth look at why Azores Airlines has so many delays, what the airline tells us it is doing about it and what passengers can do to get some relief.

The Azores are located in the Atlantic Ocean, 900 miles west of Portugal.  Often called "Europe's secret island paradise," it’s just a five-hour plane ride from Boston.

The only way to get there is with Azores Airlines also known as SATA. The government run carrier offers multiple flights a week from Boston and Providence.

In June, Westport resident Nancy Moniz made the trip to celebrate a family reunion.

“My parents were very proud of their island and they wanted to share that experience,” Moniz told Boston 25 News.

Her Sunday evening flight didn't leave Logan Airport until 1 a.m. Wednesday morning.

“One minute they were reassuring us that we were going out, the next minute they were saying it was delayed.  When we questioned why it was delayed they told us to shut up and walk away and they threatened to call police,” Moniz said.

During the 51-hour delay, SATA agents called State Police on passengers at least twice.

We found the struggles Azores Airline faced in June are not uncommon. Flight number 220 from Boston to the region’s capital, Ponta Delgada, flew 26 times in July and August.

According to the airline ranking website FlightStats.com, it was: late, very late or excessively late 66 percent of the time. The site found Flight 220 was "on-time more often than 0 percent of other flights."

During the same two-month period in the summer travel season, all of the Azores Airlines flights from Boston scored a 0 out of 5 stars in on-time performance according to airstats.com.

Ashley Raiteri is the Chief Information Officer at AirHelp, a company that forces carriers to compensate passengers when flights are cancelled and delayed.

In 2016 AirHelp ranked Azores as the world's worst airline.  Azores has since improved its AirHelp ranking to 74th out of 87 airlines. That’s still in the bottom 15 percent of all carriers worldwide, and does not include the delay issues from this summer.

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“Their incentive to deliver a higher quality on-time performance is really limited due to the monopoly that they have on their destination. Passengers flying from Boston, Rhode Island to the Azores don't have a lot of other options,” said Raiteri.

Passengers have also complained about the airline to Massport, the state authority that owns and operates Logan Airport. But we found there is really nothing Massport can do.

In an email, a spokesperson told Boston 25 News that Massport does not monitor the performance of Azores Airlines, and even if they did, the agreement Azores has, does not allow Massport to take action against the carrier for performance issues

Edward Demelo, who owns a popular and respected travel agency in Fall River called Columbia Travel, says he tells people to get their concerns out there to the authorities.

“I tell the people, you’ve got to stress this to the airline, not only to the airline, but to the tourist board of the Azores, ‘hey this is what's happening’. If you want tourism this cannot not be,” said Demelo.

For people like Nancy Moniz with family in the Azores, not going, is not an option

“This is an embarrassment to the Portuguese community,” Moniz said. She says she has serious doubts if it will ever change.

Azores Airlines released a statement to Boston 25 News that reads:

“Azores Airlines has connected Portugal and the Azores Islands to New England for three decades. This summer, we faced an unfortunate series of events that led to both delays and flight cancelations. These included incidents at Logan Airport that involved equipment and labor issues. The airline has acted to inform and support our affected passengers. We chartered aircraft, booked passengers on other carriers, and worked around the clock. A special hotline was set up for passengers - and we sent teams to assist passengers and reinforce our airport staff.

Overall, our on-time performance was inline with industry standard for this period.

Moving forward we are working hard to negotiate a new labor contract and we have two brand new A321 neo aircraft, part of the A320 family, to be delivered in 3 months to form the new backbone of our Boston service.

These aircraft will provide unparalleled flexibility and performance to our passengers.

Our team apologizes for any inconvenience, and we promise to continue to strive to offer our passengers and the many communities that depend on us the best service, safety and value.”

If you've experienced lengthy delays or cancellations traveling on Azores or any other carrier registered in the European Union, you could be entitled to up to $700 in compensation, that's according to an EU regulation passed in 2004. In some cases you have five years to file a claim.

You can try to file on your own, or you can have a company like AirHelp.com do it for you. AirHelp takes a fee if the claim is paid.

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