Book awards on EY partner airlines
 

I have been trying to book a reward flight to Germany on a flight operated by AB using Etihad Guest miles, the EY website shows no availability for the next 4 months and the same when I call the contact centre. I tried a few other destinations which are operated by partner airlines and I get the same result.

Seems to me that the folks at the call centre are not aware of the process to book these awards, anyone here been successful with this or know the correct procedure. I know there is availability as I tried it from AB's website directly.

Can you see availability through BA EC? I have faced the blues doing the same for an AB flight, EY insisted no seats available despite showing up through BA, QF and VA!

Yes BAEC shows availability and so does AB Topbonus so I know there are seats.

Is there a way to transfer guest miles to topbonus instead and I can book it direct with AB?

All of the threads on partner award availability with EY Guest miles suggest that EY has access to a tiny subset of what is available to other programs on those carriers, possibly no availability at all.

Hi Zol, let us help you with this. Kindly send your Etihad Guest number and your direct contact number with the international code via private message to look into this for you. *ES

I had a very Kafka-esque conversation with an Etihad agent a few months ago where they politely advised me that every single seat on every single day for every single Jet Airways flight on every single route was sold out with no exceptions for the next 11 months, but please try back tomorrow because availability changes constantly.

Hi B747-437B , Let us know if you still need any help! *ES

So we now have Jet, Brussels and Air Berlin - all with no reward availability to any destination for the next 12 months. What is the point of advertising if you aren't able to book anything. Maybe a case for the ASA?

I think the issue is technical combined with misinformed agents. So techies aren't telling agents that the booking system is broken and returns no results, agents look up availability, see none, then assume there really aren't seats.

This is the result of transiting to Sabre a couple years ago. :rolleyes: VA did the same and have the exact same issues.

Hi jimbosmith300, let us know if you need any help. Feel free to send the flight details and your Etihad Guest number including your direct contact number to be able to contact you. *ES

So how do we get anyone from Etihad to actually investigate this rather than just telling us to phone to check availability?

Await a proactive EY staff to be assigned internally to look at this issue, instead of taking things at face value. Maybe a year or two, one can only hope.

Come on EtihadHelp ...

How can we assist you further jimbosmith300? *HE

hah!

Hi there,

Thank you for lettings us know.

We are in touch with the relevant team and they will look into your enquiries. We do really apologize for the inconvenience caused by our end.

Thank you for your patience again. *JS

The movie Brazil is described as "set in a consumer-driven dystopian world in which there is an over-reliance on poorly maintained (and rather whimsical) machines." I worry that my engagement with EY results in me being sucked ever closer to that. If it is true that the technical mechanism to book partner awards is (and has been for some time) broken and yet EY management has not communicated that to the agents we speak with, that would explain the fact that partner awards are like unicorns.

I have never seen a report of a partner award issued, although many people have come here and asked about some of the seemingly good valued options, only to find no award space, ever.

Any update? Is it broken?

Has anyone on FT booked (or heard tell of a booking for) a partner award with EY miles in the last 6 months? Are there any reports anywhere or can we assume the worst which is that our miles can only be used on EY flights?

I am not speaking of limited availability here, but of the possibility that it is currently a technical impossibility for the agents to book a partner award.

I did : http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/etiha...good-luck.html

Hi stephem, If you need a help, kindly send the details via a private message and we will be happy to help you. *ES

Hi schoppy, it doesn't sound good! Do you still need a help? Let us know via private message with your contact details. *ES

So after sending a message to the CEO through Resolver.co.uk website this morning I got a call back from the supervisor of the Mancherster call centre who confirmed for me that there is an issue with booking SN and a number of airlines and a manual request has to be issued. He has told me that if I want to book anything I can go directly to him and he will sort it. I mentioned to him what about all the other people who are struggling and aren't being told about this issue and he didn't really have an answer.

So I guess all I can suggest is that if you want to book something and call centre staff don't have a clue email the CEO and you will get some action

I have eventually, grabbed a J return award on AB. The issue is when you call EY, they search availability on their system which shows NIL as EY doesn't operate that segment but what the agent needs to do is check on the partner airline system and go from there. Hang up and keep trying.

This is priceless. Thanks for sharing.

Hi all!

We are currently trying to find out about this issue, since we have heard about this several times on the forum now. Once we know what's going on, we will update you accordingly. Thank you all for raising this issue, as sometimes, this is the only way we can find out about technical issues.

So, thank you all for your lively comments and (for us) very valuable feedback.

Have a good one!

*JP

Seriously? The only way??? The fact that not a single partner award has been booked is not the giveaway?

Everytime you open your mouth, you just shove your foot deeper inside.

I guess Etihad Guest call centre staff - when seeing that there is no availability, ever, when asked to book partner awards - either don't find it strange, or don't care, or have no way of flagging the issue.

How bizarre that the frequent flyer programme acknowledges that the only way it can get intel on the failings of said programme is by reading a third-party website. That's the most damning self-appraisal I have ever seen. It seems that not a single Etihad Guest staff member can recognise - or worse, perhaps, be bothered about - failures in their systems.

You could not make this stuff up! If it did not affect their "guests", it would be hilarious!

Omnishambles was coined for a different purpose. But it seems to fit Etihad Guest perfectly.

Ignoring all the issues at the minute...is it possible to redeem Etihad miles for US Airways flights or is only American flights are allowed?

You'll be extremely lucky to redeem even on AA flights :rolleyes:

You can rest assured that anything that still looks like a US flight will be beyond the scope of the AA-EY relationship.

And, as stated above, you wouldn't be able to book it if it was an AA flight anyway.

Dear irishguy28,

Thank you for flagging this to us.

We understand how frustrated it was. If you are still facing any issues in the near future, please feel free to let us know and we will surely look into your query.

We will also make sure to pass this feedback to the relevant team for further discussion. We will strive to improve our quality of service and offer the best flight experience from the ground to the sky.

Thank you again. *JS

Has the issue been fixed yet? I want to book an award on South African and having no luck...

No jokes, I have tried to book on partner airlines using my EY miles about 20 times in the last couple of years and have had no luck.

The response from the agents is always that I should just keep trying with them for different dates. So one time, that's what I did:

I went through every single date for an AA flight from the US to Japan for 2 months and of course got nothing. This had to be done with multiple agents as they kept getting frustrated and hanging up on me :D

In short : For all practical purposes, the redemption on EY partner airlines does not work.

This appears to be the truth. EtihadHelp had promised to report back on this apparent fact, but we have heard nothing.

I was interested in a bmi award about two years ago. They offered me some award seats. No luck recently. Anyone who had success with CSA?

Just booked an award on Virgin Australia, BNE-VLI, 13800 miles r/t + ~110€ taxes, via the German call centre.

Only issue was that the flight is shown as operated by VA SE Asia, so first they said that it can't be booked as it is a codeshare, but as the route is included in the redemption table (and VA SE Asia is not really a different airline) they did book it in the end.

Good news that this was actually possible. Maybe there are ways to get partner awards booked if you go through the right people. ^

Dear Stephem,

We are still waiting a response from Etihad Guest team. We will surely let you know we had an update.

Thank you. *JS

false advertising again that's all.in all of this forum there is hardly anything nice to say about EY.