mharlan100

I don't know if you are referring to me, but I did book first class round trip from JFK-AUH-MLE in late November. I've been following this forum for a few months and it seems like the only consistent thing is that there is not much consistency when it comes to agents finding availability. I was only able to find Apartment availability (March 2018) by searching round-trip AUH-JFK-AUH and then separately for AUH-MLE-AUH on Etihad's website. Yes, it was very time consuming and I had several pages printed with calendars out where I could write down the days and times of available flights so I could piece together all segments of the trips among the days with availability. You have to be really flexible to book these tickets in first or business class. No seats ever showed available when searching one way or round trip JFK-AUH or JFK-AUH-MLE.

I did not have any luck booking with US based AA agents or calling the Australia number. Neither could see the available seats. The New Zealand number is where I had success. However, I never did ask where the agent was located (Fiji, Trinidad, etc?). I do specifically remember telling the agent that I was so happy that she could see the seats and that other call centers could not. She said something about that call center being able to see more availability than others, for what that is worth. I'm really kicking myself for not asking where she was located. I can tell you that both times I called it was around midnight to 1AM CST, so wherever I routed to is what worked. Reading some other posts it sounds like there is even some discrepancy within certain call centers as to which agents can see what.

My advice is to not give up and call at some different times and see what happens. It would be helpful if you would post some data points for what you find out and who you talked to.