Mar 07, 2016 03:28 PM
19532 Views
At the outset, I will strongly recommend NOT to travel by Etihad Airways. They say that a person's character is tested in adverse times. The same must be true for Organizations. Etihad failed terribly as far as I am concerned. Never in my 20 years of flying globally I had felt motivated to write a negative review of an Airline and I have had my share of experiences.
I had the misfortune to travel by Etihad Airlines recently, the first time I have traveled with them.
On January 23rd New York was hit by a snow storm and I was on 24th Jan flight. There were 3 things that I see as problem areas.
- Training of staff, transparency and standing by commitments made:
I had been contacting Etihad about the flight situation out of New York since I had to drive from Boston. Other airlines had offered customers a reschedule due to the risk, New York Mayor had advised citizens not to venture out. In fact a vehicle ban was imposed on 23rd. At one time, Etihad offered rescheduling without any charge but then went back on it. I reminded them of the commitment earlier made and to review the conversations, they did not respond for 5-6 weeks and then refused to review. This is first count of breach of trust.
Secondly, at the time I rescheduled, they already had the incoming flight delayed and information that my flight will also be delayed, however Etihad kept this information hidden and instead kept saying that the flight was on-time for a long time. This was a bad case of fleecing customers when Etihad should have been helping customer avoid risk.
- Horrible on ground Handling and logistics support:
I had rescheduled to fly on 26th Jan. This flight was also delayed and I ended up missing my connection to Mumbai from Abu Dhabi. Etihad scheduled me another flight which had 12 hr layover. I was assured in New York that Etihad will arrange hotel accommodation at Abu Dhabi for this extra-ordinary long layover. I resigned to the fate and but was hoping to get some rest after being almost 20 hours in car/flight. However, when I reached Abu Dhabi, to my utter disbelief, Etihad again went back on their promise and I was supposed to roam around the terminal for the 10-12 hours till my next flight. After standing in various customer support queues for another 2 hours and pleading and negotiating with Etihad staff on this inhuman treatment, I was finally given a booking on an earlier flight which was still 4-5 hours later.
And they figured out a way to keep my luggage wrongly booked in spite of my specifically checking with the staff that the luggage was also rescheduled(which I was assured, in fact the person looked at me like I was mad asking this question). When the baggage was finally delivered it was broken, Etihad has not responded to this complaint in more than 6 weeks.
- Extremely poor grievance handling:
Having faced this terrible service, I logged grievances. My impression is that the email address given for this purpose is practically a black hole and Etihad has no intent of responding. It was only after 3-5 reminders and when they realized that I was persistent, I was contacted but nothing other than wishy-washy answers and apologies without any backing action resulted out of it. To placate me they offered some miles, but I have no intent of flying Etihad. The other 2 grievances are still pending resolution after 6 weeks.
