Originally Posted by
B747-437B
If the booking slips through and you misconnect though, ET is very good about providing hotel and rebooking you on the next available ET flight. If you want rebooking on another airline, come armed with your planned itinerary and if it makes sense they will happily rebook you once you find someone who knows how to do it. They will rebook onto Star Alliance partners with barely a second look and to most of their interline partners if you push the issue. However, the initial offer will always be the next ET flight (with full hotel and meals provided until then).
I generally agree, and have always been rebooked on Star Alliance partners myself, but I have seen them refuse before also. There were quite a few people from the NRT/HKG flight with connections to GRU. This is always tight since the flight from HKG tends to be late as often as not. The ET staff in ADD were refusing to rebook the affected passengers on a same day connection to SA via JNB, instead insisting on overnighting them in Addis then sending them on EK the next day. It made no sense to me at all, but I wasn't going to GRU that day so didn't nose into it. (ET only goes to GRU twice a week, so the next ET flight wasn't realistic).
I'd be curious what kind of contracts ET has with the hotels, as much as they are using them for misconnected pax and regular long connection pax, they must get the rooms for next to nothing.