We were travelling from Paris to Saint-Petersburg with an overnight transfer in Istanbul. The morning we arrived back to the Sabiha Gokcen airport, we found it way too overcrowded. Luckily, as we thought then, we had our baggage checked in and only needed to cross the border and pass the security control. The navigation in the airport is confusing, and we took the wrong line serving only the Turkish citizens. The border security officer refused to let us through and sent us to another line.
After the security check, we finally saw the departure information screen. It said the gate is closing, in Turkish. We rushed to the gate and found no one at the desk. 20 minutes before the scheduled departure, they left it. This was the first time I missed my flight. Probably, the first time in my experience when the gate was closed so soon, too. As instructed, we went to the Pegasus office.
The office is a tiny desk with only one person actually doing something. We spent whole two hours there just to get through the line, or more like a crowd, with lots of Turkish people swearing and shouting at the staff. There were many people of other nationalities too, people traveling with children, people having no money to buy another ticket, people with disabilities. There was no Pegasus representative to manage the crowd, there was no announcement, nothing.
When we finally had a word with the person at the desk, he told us than the only thing he can help us with is buying another ticket for the next day at a full price. No refund, no discount, nothing. And he asked me to give him my credit card details: number, name, date and the security code to buy the new ticket. Now that's some mythological creature!
I told him that it was a scam, and I could buy tickets from another company for the same day at a lower price. We were given the option to leave the airport and to do that we had to wait for some other Pegasus employee to guide us through the border control, that was another 30 minutes.
Long story short, it's been 14 days and we still have no information about our baggage. We arrived to the Saint-Petersburg airport where, we thought, our baggage would be waiting for us. It turned out they take the baggage off the plane if you miss your flight.
So, the airport is heavily overcrowded. 20 minutes before the departure, we are at the gate. It is closed and there's no one there. Pegasus representative at the nearby gate tells us that we need to go to their office. The actual departure is delayed for 30 minutes, probably because they need to find the baggage and unload it. And then, no one tells us that we need to collect it before leaving the airport.
When we arrived to Sabiha Gokcen from Paris, we saw a huge pile of bags and suitcases all over the baggage claim area. The pile was secured with a strap, branded Pegasus. So, today is the 14th day our suitcases are buried somewhere in that pile. There's no update to our lost baggage ticket, nothing.
Don't fly pgs.
P.S. They have a dysfunctional website, that doesn't have all the webpages in all the languages listed, the support form is buried somewhere (I called the hotline to find it, it is fun, believe me). Now, they send automatic messages to me, asking me to wait for their reply and to check the status of my luggage in the meantime. The link they give in the email doesn't work but if you prepend www to it the webpage will show up, or maybe not as the Luggage Tracking constantly gives you 500 Server Error. They don't provide file reference in those emails, so I called the hotline and now I know its not in their system, or they gave me the wrong one. There's an email of their manager but you cannot send messages to it, as their inbox is full.
