[AThornley]

Travelling to Abu Dhabi from Wellington, not for the faint hearted.

Our travel was booked through Etihad, flying from Wellington to Abu Dhabi (via Auckland and Sydney) departing 26 July. Etihad was code sharing the first two flights with Air New Zealand (i.e. Wellington to Auckland and Auckland to Sydney).

We are in our late 60s and this was going to be a long trip even if everything had gone to plan, but we were met with a series of system errors, stresses, poor attitudes and extreme delays.

26 July
Both flights leaving Wellington and Auckland were delayed by about 20 minutes. The Auckland to Sydney flight (Air New Zealand flight NZ109) was due to land in Sydney at 6.00pm but was diverted to Brisbane arriving 9.30pm, after circling Sydney 20-30 minutes. We were told we were unable to land in Sydney due to high winds, but Qantas flights continued to land in Sydney while our flight was circling.

Once the passengers had disembarked in Brisbane, passengers who were supposed to be travelling via Abu Dhabi to London Heathrow were re-booked to fly Qatar Airways via Doha and onto to London that same night.

Passengers travelling to (as opposed to via) Abu Dhabi were advised that we would be re-booked on a flight to Abu Dhabi from Sydney as Etihad doesn’t fly out of Brisbane.

It is not clear to us why we were not also flown to Abu Dhabi via Doha at this stage.

27 July
Eventually, in the early hours of Wednesday morning we were advised that we would be sent to a hotel. Unfortunately, the customs gate wasn’t open and when it eventually was opened there were no customs officials and so we finally got to our hotel room at 2.30am. 20 minutes later we received a text advising that our flight NZ1711 would be leaving for Sydney at 8.40am that morning.

When we arrived at check-in at Brisbane Airport on 27 July, flight NZ1711 was cancelled and we were re-booked for the 1.10pm flight to Sydney. However, we were then removed from this flight as there was no connecting flight for us in the system to Abu Dhabi.

We rang Etihad and Air New Zealand many times trying to confirm a connecting flight to Abu Dhabi. Each airline said that only the other airline could book the flight to Abu Dhabi, so no progress was made. Etihad had a flight leaving Sydney 3.15pm to Abu Dhabi that afternoon and we requested seats on that flight, but to no avail. We subsequently found out that it was Air New Zealand’s responsibility to re-book the flight to get us to Abu Dhabi as, once the original flight was changed by Air New Zealand, Etihad can’t override or control it in their system.

We eventually flew from Brisbane to Sydney, departing Brisbane 11.10am. On arrival at Sydney’s domestic airport we had to catch a taxi to the International airport. We were rushing to try and get to the International airport as soon as possible to see if we could speak to a customer service rep face to face, to arrange a flight to Abu Dhabi that afternoon.

The Air New Zealand counter was closed, but fortunately an Air New Zealand representative near the counter responded to our enquiries about our flights to Abu Dhabi and the possibility of the afternoon flight that we had asked about. She rang Etihad who said there were no seats available on the flight that afternoon. Our daughter rang Etihad who advised that economy was full but that there were seats in business class. I then walked to the Etihad counter. They confirmed that the flight was fully booked and closed, but suggested that we could fly to Melbourne and catch the Etihad flight to Abu Dhabi at 9.15pm that evening.

It is not clear to us why we were not flown to Melbourne from Brisbane in the first place instead of to Sydney if there were no seats on the flight to Abu Dhabi from Sydney.

We then went back to Air New Zealand and requested to be sent to Melbourne and booked on that evening Etihad flight. We then received a text 10 minutes later which said that we were booked onto flight EY455 28 July, departing 8.20pm to Abu Dhabi – nearly 1.5 days later. We returned to Air New Zealand explaining that we were unhappy with the new fight details. We also asked if Air New Zealand would be providing us with access to a hotel room, meal vouchers etc as we would be delayed by a further night in Sydney and were told that this is not Air New Zealand’s responsibility and that we should not have received any access to accommodation in Brisbane. This was incredibly upsetting to us and is just patently untrue and inconsistent with Air New Zealand’s policies (as stated on their website). I was in tears and felt powerless and overwhelmed by the lack of compassion.

Eventually, after we kept following up with the Air New Zealand staff on the ground in Sydney, we were then rebooked on a flight to Doha departing at 9.00pm that evening (Qatar Airways flight QR 909) with a connecting flight to Abu Dhabi (QR 1050) departing 2.10pm on 28 July.

In the meantime, Air New Zealand had found that our return flights from Abu Dhabi (EY450 Abu Dhabi to Sydney departing 18 August and EY4441 Sydney to Wellington) had been cancelled as we didn’t make our flight from Sydney to Abu Dhabi the day before (EY455) due to the Sydney flight being redirected to Brisbane. They tried to have it reinstated but the Etihad booking system was down.

Checking in for the Doha flight we were advised that we couldn’t travel as we didn’t have a departing flight from Abu Dhabi (and so would not qualify for a Visitor Visa in Abu Dhabi). The customer service rep spoke to their supervisor, who then rang Etihad who confirmed it had been reinstated. We were then able to fly out on QR909. At this point it seemed like the last straw.

The remaining flights to Abu Dhabi went according to plan. We landed in Abu Dhabi on 28 July at 4.15pm, over one day and 11hours after we should have landed.

Return flights
18 August
We received a message from Etihad 6pm on Wednesday 17 August (less than 24 hours before scheduled take off) advising that our flight would be 2 hours late taking off. We were then delayed for a further hour on the tarmac. This compressed our transfer time in Sydney airport (we were originally supposed to have a 3.5 hour stop over/ transfer time but this was reduced to half an hour).

At check-in in Abu Dhabi on 18 August (for Etihad Flight EY450 Abu Dhabi to Sydney), we were told that we weren’t able to check-in for our next flight to Wellington (Sydney to Wellington) as the Etihad and Air New Zealand systems were apparently incompatible (even though our flights were fully booked through Etihad). We were told by the Etihad team to show them our Etihad air tickets with luggage tags on to get our boarding passes at the gate in Sydney.

19 August
We arrived in Sydney close to the boarding time of the flight from Sydney to Wellington and went directly to the departure gate for flight NZ246.

We were advised that we weren’t on the manifest and were told that Etihad needed to rebook the tickets for us. We showed the Etihad app with our itinerary, which showed that we were booked on that flight, the original schedule and an explanation of previous events. We asked for a manager but they were adamant that they were unable to help and Etihad would need to assist us.

Unsurprisingly in Sydney airport, we were unable to locate an open Etihad departure location so returned to the Air New Zealand gate, as the flight was closing.

On our return to the gate, our situation was being discussed with a senior staff member who found a way to get us on the flight (without our luggage).

21 August
Our luggage showed up 2 days later.

Our complaints
At no time has an apology been given or any compensation been offered discussed for the incompetence, lack of staff training, inconvenience or the huge stress that the events detailed above have caused us.

Leaving aside the question of why we could not land in Sydney when Qantas flights were landing all around us, as highlighted above, if Air New Zealand had been proactive they would have sent us on the Qatar flight to Doha, along with the rest of the passengers transitioning to London (on 26 July) or at the very least checked the other flights to Abu Dhabi from Australian Airports when they identified that there was no room on the Sydney to Abu Dhabi flight and flown us to Melbourne instead of back to Sydney.

Eithad cancelled our return tickets and had not advised us that they had done so even though our daughter had called them to ask about our situation and their records clearly showed what had happened. This resulted in us nearly missing our flight to Doha. In addition, when they reinstated the flights, it appears that they only half completed the task which caused the problem at Sydney airport.

Both Air NZ and Etihad appeared to only be interested in shifting the blame to the other and not actually helping their customer.

2 users thanked author for this post.

fatbear, Woodpecker

[K1ngston]

WOW!!!! What a catalogue of errors, I feel desperately sorry for you both, and I was going to complain about the something I think I will let it go!!

Hope you got your luggage back and your sanity, and just shows how far the Industry has to go to iron out all the issues we are seeing currently.

1 user thanked author for this post.

AThornley

[cwoodward]

Yours is the worst story of this nature that I have heard about for a long time and unfortunately it is likely to be a battle for you to get any satisfaction or compensation from Etihad although they are the responsible carrier. I hope that you succeed getting a positive response and compensation as Etihad who are not noted for their positive customer service and I fear that you will need to push them hard.
The other airlines involved are unlikely to assist as your contract was with Etihad. However if you are a valued customer of Air New Zealand they may assist you tackling Etihad.

I would suggest as a first step that you find out the name email and telephone of the the Etihad station manager in New Zealand and or Australia and speak to them personally. You may need to push a little to get the information but it should not be too difficult and once you have these details you should be able to make progress with a claim for compensation.

I avoid the ‘sandpit airlines’ as their response to customer service issues is often,but not always, poor.

Given the current situation re international travel perhaps your choice of airline was not the best option particularly as they had no base in NZ -you were traveling economy – the flight was a 3 leg code-share. All to be avoided if possible as your business was frankly not of much value to anyone.

Possibly your best bet (but perhaps not the cheapest option) was with Singapore airlines daily from Auckland to Singapore and then onward with them to Abu Dhabi. Perhaps purchasing the Wellington-Auckland leg separately on a cheap Air NZ advance purchase local ticket would be cheaper and avoid a sometimes troublesome code share.

I hope that this is of some help.

5 users thanked author for this post.

fatbear, Bullfrog, AMcWhirter, Woodpecker, AThornley

[CathayLoyalist2]

Wow what can you say. This appalling episode makes BA look exemplary!!. I would imagine the SQ option via Singapore, as mentioned by cwoodward, would have cost many hundreds of dollars/pounds more but hindsight is a wonderful thing.

5 users thanked author for this post.

fatbear, Bullfrog, AMcWhirter, DerekVH, AThornley

[AMcWhirter]

In these uncertain times it’s worth taking the simplest and most direct routing even if it’s a higher fare.

6 users thanked author for this post.

Bullfrog, AThornley, MartynSinclair, cwoodward, esselle, DerekVH

[alistairNicoll]

wow.

Once upon a time Etihad was a brilliant airlines and was upset as it only had a 4 star rating. Then Mr Hogan bought the airline to its knees with his misguided strategy of investing in basket cases and losing millions and the quality of service nosedived and somehow though Etihad got its fifth star

This is an all too common problems facing consumers these days where a company uses a third party to help deliver the product and then when things go wrong neither company accepts responsibility for sorting out solutions with the customer

1 user thanked author for this post.

Mark

[cwoodward]

Allistair – money is no object as its not of course a business in any accepted sense.
Hopefully what substitutes for the government at some point become unhappy about losing billions on this baby, will find other toys and close it down.

[alistairNicoll]

[postquote quote=1229929]

As a result of the losses they reduced the quality of the service as they cut back meaning that previous loyal regular users like myself went elsewhere

However the key issue is their failure to take ownership of the problem

2 users thanked author for this post.

AThornley, Mark

[Author]

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