Etihad Airways

✅ Trip Verified | Tehran to Sydney via Abu Dhabi. Very frustrated from their customer service. They closed their offices in Iran and don't operate in that country anymore. My mum bought her ticket through them before they close their offices. They moved her ticket to Emirates and My mum needs to change her return ticket and fly soon due to her mum being sick. I called them and they refused to change her ticket because it's been changed once. I kept explaining her ticket changed by force because Etihad forced her to change the airline only. Date of the flight was the same but they refused it again. Now my mum needs to buy a new ticket and lose $2000. Very irresponsible airline. Its not passenger fault that you guys don't work in that country any more, you should take responsibility for that

✅ Trip Verified | Manchester to Ho Chi Minh City via Abu Dhabi. The service was awful from start to finish. Check in staff were not polite, staff on the plane rude and overall very disappointing. I needed to change my return flight and the customer service were no different. I was offered £260 to change the flight which is extortionate. I have flown with Emirates previously and had no problems changing for £100. I needed to make sure that my partner could pick me up from my destination so i had to hang up and call again the following day. I had no choice but to pay for the change. I then proceeded to call the customer services again the following day and they said that the cost is now £357. It was explained that the £260 was a special price on the day. With no choice I had to proceed. The plane was dated and overall staff made the journey the worst flight I have ever experienced.

✅ Trip Verified | London to Manila via Abu Dhabi. Checked in for the flight at Heathrow - am Etihad silver so can use the Business class desk to check in etc. Had a good chat to the lady who once she saw I was going to Manila was interested. Collected by boarding passes for the 2 outbound legs and headed to departure area. I was sat in boarding zone 5 so lot of people in gate area. Handed pass to be scanned and was pulled to one side and given a new boarding pass having been given an upgrade to business class which was a very nice surprise. Boarded via the upper jetway, warmly welcomed by cabin crew and took my seat. Had a glass of orange juice and made my food choice from the menu. The whole upper deck on Etihad A380 is premium seating and was very comfortable. 4 seats across in 1-2-1 arrangement however some seats are rearward facing. Seat was comfy and converted into a lie flat bed. Seat has a lift up space for anything loose you might have ie phone or book etc. Large touch screen with side control for the inflight entertainment system. After take off more drinks were served and food service began. You can specify a time to eat on the menu as well. Crew member prepared the table for my meal which I thought was delicious. After clearing away the meal service I settle down to watch a film or 2. Choice is good and operation of the system is quite straightforward. The external cameras on the A380 are a nice touch. Flight departed on time and arrived on schedule and after clearing security made my way to my next flight. Abu-Dhabi to Manila is a Boeing 777 which was looking a little tired inside (12 years old) and I was back in economy. Still a good flight with reasonable food and good cabin crew. Managed to sleep. Flight on time Manila - Abu dhabi flight was the same Boeing 777 and again the food was fine and crew attentive. Flight on time Abu dhabi to London - again on Airbus A380 and was upgraded to business class again. Flight was very good. Food was excellent. Choices were made from the menu before departure. The only minor snag I had was that my seat would not convert to lie flat bed. Cabin crew were able to resolve quickly. Overall I found the business class experience to be very good and would recommend to anyone.

✅ Trip Verified | On 13th December, we had a flight Oslo to Cochin via Amsterdam and Abu Dhabi. Our flight to Amsterdam was delayed with more than 2 hours, so that we missed our flight to Abu Dhabi. Etihad a great job to find us a new flight via Munich to Cochi via Delhi the day after and found us an hotel for the night. However, our luggage were missing in Delhi (we had to pass them through custom) and we had to spend numerous filling forms. Arrived in Cochin, we expected to get our luggage the day after, but it didn't went like this. We had to Call numerous time to Etihad, Delhi / Munich / Amsterdam airport to try to find our luggage. Nobody seemed to know where there were. Finally Wednesday the 20th of December, almost one week later, we got our luggage back. The problem were not finished. The day of our return flight, 3rd January, we were informed at the airport that our return flight Cochin-Abu Dhabi-Amsterdam-Oslo was cancelled, because we weren't on the flight on the way to India. I was standing there early 2am in the morning with my 2 children in the airport, the Etihad staff telling me that we had no way to come back to Oslo before one week later, since all flights in the following days were fully booked. In addition, I was supposed to pay for the return flight myself. I had to book a new flight with another company and got back to Oslo 36 hours later (!), with exhausted kid, and shocked by the service Etihad airways gave us.

✅ Trip Verified | Dusseldorf to Ho Chi Minh City via Abu Dhabi. I am really disappointed with the attitude and the way Etihad response to the customers. Firstly, the meals on the plane tasted not good. Secondly, I had to transfer at Abu Dhabi for 12 hours. Normally, by other flight branch (ex: Emirates), the customers will receive a voucher for staying in hotels or for eating. But I received nothing from Etihad. Morever, the customer service at Abu Dhabi even did not want to answer me. Okay. If you do not need customers flying with economy class like me, I will not book any flight with Etihad anymore. I will accept higher price with another flight organization and of course better service than yours.

✅ Trip Verified | We travelled from London to Manila via Abu Dhabi a few days before Christmas with a 1.5 hour stopover in Abu Dhabi. The flight from London was delayed by 1 hour which is no big deal. During the flight as we approached Abu Dhabi, we ended up circling due to bad weather. On asking the flight staff, no one was able to advise what the next steps were. We eventually landed at Abu Dhabi and were advised to go to the Transfer Desk. They told us our plane was still there and to go to the gate. We go to the gate only to be told our seats had been given away and we had been offloaded. We questioned why and they were rude in their response and told us to go to the transfer desk. Someone 'helped' us by walking us to the transfer desk. All we wanted to know was when our next flight would be, which we only found out after queuing behind a 100 people and found out that it was in 7 hours. At no point was any rest place or accomodation advised or given and we had to argue in getting food vouchers rather than being offered them. We managed to see through the next 7 hours only to be confronted with more difficulty. We queued for our connecting flight only to be told we need to check in our hand carry. We insisted we were carrying medicine which we needed to keep, at which point the attendant shouted and threatened to deboard us from the plane if we didn't comply. After much stress managed to eventually get on to the flight. We arrived in MNL and waited for 2 hours in baggage only to find out 2 out of 3 of our checked in suitcases did not make it. As a result we were unable to give gifts and presents to our relatives for Christmas plus our clothes and personal effects were missing. On questioning where are luggage was, there was no explanation and we had to wait 24hrs before they could track our baggage. Etihad eventually got our luggage to us 3 days later although frustratingly no arrangement was made to drop it. They decided to call at 3am and demanded they drop it, irrespective of how inconvenient this was. We decided to rebook our return as the issues and delays stopped us from doing some important things. We called Etihad only to be told it would cost the price of 1 full priced ticket for us both. We explained our challenges on our outward trip but no attempt was made to assist us with our return flight. When we asked them to proceed on the back of the conversation the previous day they opened our ticket (essentially cancelling our original return ticket) they went on to explain it would actually cost the price of 2 tickets rather than 1 which they had previously advised. We argued that we would have only been happy to pay for the price discussed the day before and was not happy they had misinformed us. They left us no choice but to buy new tickets at full price due to an error on their part without considering the previous problems. A lot of this could have been avoided if they looked at helping their customers. Issues happen but under no circumstances should the customers be dealt with such blatant disregard. We have been lucky enough to have travelled with Emirates, Cathay Pacific, KLM, and Singapore whose customer service has been great and unfortunately Etihad do not deserve to be held anywhere near the same level as them. Their lack of professionalism and customer care left so much to be desired. Their follow up and lack of attempt to assist frustrated and tired customers also was shocking for such a high profile company. Avoid using them!

✅ Trip Verified | Muscat to Abu Dhabi return in economy. Check-in in MCT fairly swift, in AUH very slow. AUH airport was heavily overcrowded at the time of our departure. Long lines everywhere, relatively slow service, no place to sit. Both flights were full to the last seat, but the crew handled everything well. They were friendly and even managed to distribute small snacks and water on the 50-min hop. Both flights started and landed on time. The planes were a little bit older but fine. Unfortunately this route is outrageously expensive compared to other Inner-Gulf flights. Etihad and Oman Air take every advantage of the missing competition on this route.

✅ Trip Verified | Chicago to Colombo via Abu Dhabi. This is one of the worse flights I have ever taken. Very poor service followed by very little food for a 15 hour flight. They made a pretty big deal about the size of the bags I was taking as caryons. They made me put my bags in to a container and try to make me pay extra when they do not fit in. Some flight attendants were rude. There were some good people, but overall, I have had much better service before. Flight was late and almost missed my other flight at Abu Dhabi.

✅ Trip Verified | I have flown on Etihad on previous occasions and it had been a while since I last traveled with them. Quite a few changes since then. The seats are slightly larger than they used to be, the staff are friendlier and they have a full entertainment system for their flights to Calicut unlike the others that fly the same route (except Qatar Airways). I had requested for the Low Calorie Meal which was served much earlier than the rest of the passengers which is always an advantage. What I did not appreciate was that the airline had to add more fuel for the flight to AUH from DMM since it did not carry enough. There was a fog in Abu Dhabi and they were advised to do so, delaying the flight by an hour. We landed with an hour to spare for my connecting flight. After another hour of delays and waiting on the runway on the plane to CCJ it finally took off. I don't blame them for the delay since the fog was really bad.

✅ Trip Verified | I have always been a loyal customer of Emirates but wanted to try Etihad just cause they were offering much lower fares from San Francisco to Hyderabad. The journey from SFO-HYD was decent. They have comparable cabin service to Emirates, but their aircraft are somewhat old. The problem was during the return leg HYD-SFO. Don't ever go to their HYD check-in counter with even a single KG of extra baggage. I had just 1.1 Kg of extra baggage in my combined check-in luggage of 46KGs. I should have accounted for the Finance Textbook I added at the end. But little did I know that it would cause me so much hassle. First I thought they would be lenient and just let it go, but the guy was at the counter was rude and wanted me to pay the extra fee. I agreed to pay the additional price for the extra KG, but supposedly they have a flat rate of $125US. The guy was hurrying me to pay the additional fee and threatened me to get out of the line and to come back after throwing my luggage. He even mocked me that I will get further 15KGs if I buy the extra baggage and I can fill my bags with the Karachi biscuits they were selling at the airport. Terrible service. I was upset by this treatment as I didn't pay so much for such service. I called the manager, who was nice, but he wasn't helpful either. I was ready to throw my luggage, but I was not going to pay after the humiliation. I read their luggage policy and decided to carry my Textbook as a personal item (since they are not allowing an additional laptop bag, but a personal item now which they don't tell you about). It was a horrid experience. I will always avoid Etihad after this incident and wouldn't recommend the airline to my worst enemy. Stick to Emirates if you can!