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Wandering Aramean

Thanks for the help, Etihad!

Thanks for the help, Etihad!

I always enjoy receiving an email from an airline about an upcoming trip. Usually it is a reminder to buy an ancillary product or something else I have no interest in. But this morning’s email from Etihad was rather different. They were doing me a favor, it seems.

We refer to the recent booking you made online to travel on our services. The flights that were selected require travel on our code share partner American Airlines for a part of your journey and then a transfer on to a connecting Etihad Airways flight. As we operate a non-stop service on the same date, we have accommodated you on the direct Etihad Airways flight at no additional cost to yourself.

Pick a path, any path. Until we rebook you to what we think you should have
Map generated by the Great Circle Mapper - copyright © Karl L. Swartz.

Apparently booking a codeshare flight on Etihad’s partners was a mistake I made, not an excuse to spend 12 hours on a layover in Manchester by hopping a FlyBE flight over to Isle of Man for no good reason. Fortunately a (relatively) quick call to the Etihad call center got my original itinerary reinstated. At least one other person I know reported that the call center denied his request to be put back on the originally booked flights, so that’s an interesting twist.

Either way, a bit of fun with the airline trying to “help” when none is needed or desired.

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Seth Miller

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I'm Seth, also known as the Wandering Aramean. I was bit by the travel bug 30 years ago and there's no sign of a cure. I fly ~200,000 miles annually; these are my stories. You can connect with me on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

5 Comments

  1. I have the same routing (AUH-MAN-JFK) scheduled in September. I used miles to upgrade the EY segment. Do you there there is any chance they would still try to put me on the direct route?

    1. I doubt they’d change the flights on you with one of the two segments upgraded. That said, if they did and kept you in business class I’d probably accept the change.

  2. @Mark – are you flying on a ticket from the 12/24 “sale”? If so, what miles did you use to upgrade???

    1. @Eric – Yes. JFK-AUH / AUH-MAN-JFK. I called and they confirmed upgrade space was available only on the AUH-MAN segment. I then transferred SPG –> Etihad (but I think you can also transfer Citi TYP), which took about a week, and then I called back to process the upgrade one I had the miles.

  3. Thanks… will give them a call. I’ve got one JFK-AUH-JFK trip and one JFK-CDG-AUH-JNB-AUH-CDG-JFK trip and would be nice to get up front…

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