WOW Air Ceases Operation, Leaving Everyone Saying ‘WOW’

In case you haven’t already heard, WOW Air suddenly announced that they have ceased operation and all WOW Air flights have been cancelled.

This was announced it in the middle of the night on Thursday, 3/28/2019, and was done without even notifying people who were in airports waiting to board flights!

Yeah, they just stranded thousands of people. WOW suggested passengers “check available flights with other airlines” and were advised to contact their credit card companies about refunds.

Here is a link to the alert:

https://wowair.com/travel-alert/?_ga=2.78598804.1472523754.1553785509-1222432127.1553785509

I am particularly disappointed because I have personally recommended WOW Air to my friends, family, and coworkers for over 2 years. I’ll never forget the day that I heard about WOW Air for the first time. One of my coworkers who also loves to travel emailed me a link to an announcement that the airline was coming to Pittsburgh and, when I clicked on their website, it was like a dream come true. The bright purple destination page was filled with tiles, showing pictures that might as well have been the highlight reel of my European bucket list but with prices cheaper than a flight from Pittsburgh to Philadelphia. Flights to Iceland for $99?! SIGN. ME. UP. I couldn’t help but think But what’s the catch?!  I started reading reviews and travel blogs and gathered that WOW, like Spirit or Frontier or any of those “cheap” airlines, was an à la carte airline with zero frills but, that being said, it got you from point A to point B. I sent the link to Brenden and, before dinner, we had booked our next vacation: 9 nights in Iceland.

Flying WOW was pretty much what I expected. They offer no freebies or extras, so no free drink/snack service, but we had planned for that and brought our own. I enjoyed the shocking purple plane exterior and interior decor. Honestly, the most frustrating thing about the flight out was the fact that we had an overnight flight and they kept the cabin lights on the entire time for some inexplicable reason (I never travel without an eye mask now because of that flight). WOW got us safely into Reykjavik and we had one of the best trips of our lives exploring Iceland. We had a direct flight home to Pittsburgh and WOW lost my bag. It took 2 days to get back, which was an annoyance but, well, I was home so I wasn’t up in arms about it. At the end of the day, the pros of WOW outweighed the cons enough that we booked a second trip with the airline to Germany for Oktoberfest and, again, the airline got us safely to and from another once in a lifetime experience. We would have eventually gone to Iceland and visited Germany at some point in our lives but WOW’s prices really were enough of incentive for us to commit and go at the times that we did and those trips happen to be some of our very favorite memories. For that, WOW Air will always have my gratitude. Honestly, if they hadn’t discontinued WOW flights departing from Pittsburgh International Airport in January, we would’ve continued booking trips and would’ve been quite disappointed today.

I think that everyone who was asking, “Is this too good to be true?” about WOW just got their questions answered. Apparently, there was a reason no other airline could compete with WOW’s discount fares. The discount rates that drove customers to fly with WOW also drove them out of business.