xobile

Rare opportunity for me to speak directly to the heads of Etihad US as part of a dinner they are giving on a North American road show for their premium members. The Points Guy had a write up of the earlier event in Washington.

"Highlights of the evening included a trivia game for two of the tables (one of which was my table) where we had to identify the roles of five different Etihad agents just by the uniform they were wearing. My table won, and the six of us were entered into a door prize with the winner receiving a wooden Etihad 787 model with a wing span of almost two feet. Etihad then gave away a round-trip business-class ticket from IAD to AUH and the gift of Etihad Guest Gold status to two family members of one lucky attendee."

Read more: http://thepointsguy.com/2016/06/an-evening-with-etihad-at-the-uae-embassy/#ixzz4B9Qm7nmd


Hoping to use this opportunity to push some points,including the inability to see fare class for multi city routings until after purchase, prepaid luggage only being able to be purchased up to 25 hours in advance, and a lack of clarity and transparency when it comes to promotions. Those are off the top of my head, what do you think would make good points to make in the limited engagement I might have with them? I hope to be able to give a letter to them as well, so they can read in more detail on their own time.

VH-RMD

Improve the Customer Service interface ie; EtihadHelp (who is of very little help), empower certain CS agents to make decisions instead of 'getting back to you' which rarely occurs.

SeeBuyFly

Why has the food gotten worse?
Why is 'dine anytime' being deemphasized?
Why is the onboard service so variable?
What is the future of their relationship with AA, given that they are making it impossible to use AAdvantage miles for connecting flight awards even though the individual flights are available?

NoY

I doubt very much indeed that these “Executives” will have any bearing on what happens on a global, corporate level at all. Everything comes from Abu Dhabi’s top team board room @:-)

amnicoll

Why can they not devise a more user friendly system for allocating award upgrades instead of saying we (customers) must check every week to see if a seat has been released. I have suggested this but just got fobbed off

Why does their marketing and communication so often fall short of the mark

Dogmatick

Why, as all of you in the room are Premium members, are they constantly diluting the EtihadGuest levels.

Platinum should get cars whatever the booking class for example in Business
Platinum should still get all their miles back when cancelling a reward ticket

Also how about having access to your upcoming flights through the web portal rather than needing the information to access them individually (this really eats me)

Or an Android app alongside the iPhone one

skywardhunter

Those things would put them close to on par (technology wise) with Emirates... Crazy talk

irishguy28

Ask them why they didn't announce the new changes to Etihad Guest T&Cs (including the 10% refund penalty on tickets, even for elites).

pcharles

Hasn't the date already passed? It would be nice if the OP could report back to what correspondence occurred?

amnicoll

His blog has been updated but it would appear that he did not ask any of the questions or has not reported the answers

irishguy28

Oh. So this was an ego thread, then?

IAD_flyer

Which city will this event be in?

amnicoll

"was" in not "will be"

amnicoll

looking at the blog it would appear so

Richklhs

I asked some tough questions about Etihad Guest at the WAS dinner. Still waiting on a follow up. There are no Etihad Guest specific employees for EY in North America.