My expereience with Etihad airlines would be the first and the last after July 9, 2011. My family and I have been travelling to India from Canada for the past 10 years, several times. Sometimes, several times in a year. We have always travelled by Emirates and had the best possible service.
This year my dad decided to book with Etihad to see how the flight would be and we got the ticket for a little cheaper (as there was a cancellation).
Issue:
My brother and I were late at the baggage area of the airport by three mins. Though we had already checked in (via online), they did not make any effort whatsoever to check the baggage in. There was not one person at the counter to help! Not one. By the look of the surroundings, it looked like they had closed the area before the actual time (before 9:45 pm). There was one Etihad staff walking around. So, we go to him asking for help. He did not give us any help, no contact information, no resources on what to do next. All he said was, "You have to re-book".
Once I got home, I called the toll-free number of Etihad airlines. I was put on hold for over an hour! In the end, I decided to leave a voice message. I also emailed them regarding our problem. After four days, I still have not gotten any response from them.
I decided to leave feedback on their website. Left three complaints regarding their crew, their customer service, and their response to complaints. I stil have not recieved any response.

After contacting our travel agency, we are required to pay $575 per person (total $1150) to rebook a flight, just cause we missed the flight by three mins! That's heartbreaking. We don't have that much money right now. And, if we cancel the tickets, then we are losing about $1400 dollars.

If there's any possible way, someone can help us by forwarding this message to the rightful owners and get us some help, it would be much appreciated.

Thank You,
Nithu Thonichalil

HI Leisl,

The same thing has just recently happened to my relative, who was charged twice on a credit card when trying to book a seat online on Etihad . The first time she tried, she got the message from Etihad website that her payment hadn't gone through; so she tried again, and once again she got the message that the payment hadn't gone through. So she quit trying to book the ticket, but was appalled to find later from her bank that the payment had indeed gone through each time, and that Etihad had taken her money twice. She is now running pillar to post to try and recover the additional money that Etihad has taken. So whats really going with these guys in Etihad?

airlinelad2011: Why the racist comments? And you've never heard a Brit go off like that?Are you kidding? The loudest and most frequent whiners tend to be Brits wherever they are. So chill out and back off with the racist comments. Either respond to the concerns, or shut up instead making personal attacks!