rvlcr

Hello,

Does anyone know whether Etihad has announced which daily flight they will keep, moving forward, on the AUH-MLE route? I believe that currently they are slotted to start flying to the Maldives again on Aug 1, and i am due to fly out on Oct 1. I currently have flights with Turkish but would prefer to fly with EY since they have much better timings (or at least they did prior to corona).

Currently, on Aug 1, EY website is showing resumption of this route with two daily flights from AUH to MLE (EY260 and EY278). Now i doubt they would go from zero to two flights a day just like that, so was wondering if anyone on here knew of a more updated "schedule" for this specific route than what is on their website.

Thanks in and advance.

Kevin Weldon

Following with same interest to see what flights remain.

hurnik

All I could find was this, which doesn't tell you much (no specific days), just "2 weekly flights"

https://en.sun.mv/61226

rvlcr

thank you, i also saw that article. unfortunately EY is not being very transparent on their scheduling (no airline really is at this point). hopefully by october the situation will be a bit more stable.

after 3 months of waiting for a refund (we originally were supposed to fly out on 3/11), i finally called them up again today for the nth time and they were able to rebook us free of charge on 10/1 despite the flying costing nearly 80% more than what we had paid for it originally.

we are booked on EY 260 (10/1) on the way there and EY 279 (10/15) on the way back. fingers crossed that these flights will actually be running in October. 🤞🏻🤞🏻🤞🏻

hurnik

Hope you can go. A lot of the Maldives resorts won't open until 10/1, so fingers crossed that you're vacation still happens. There's a thread on Trip Advisor forums (Asia -> Maldives) with a list of known resorts that are opening and when, just an FYI.

We had to cancel our April 2020 trip (lost a few thousand dollars due to non-refundable fees and we can't get CFAR in New York). Rebooked to April 2021 (probably should've taken the refund, but I had to act before April 1st, 2020 before everything totally blew up).

Dav77

We have a reservation on August, flights: in EY 278 on 5th / out EY 261 on 21st (Y) actually both are confirmed ...

rvlcr

looks like they’ve updated the august flight schedule. they seem to have decided keep EY260/EY 261 every day for the month of august and then adding a second flight on tuesdays and sundays (EY 278/EY 279).

looks like they are keeping the early morning flight which is smart cuz the flight reaching MLE in the afternoon is really badly timed for connections from the US, europe and also for seaplane transfers since the latest you can arrive is 3pm.

i anticipate that at the very least, it will be like this in october too which works just fine....

Dav77

They seems to flight only on Tuesday and Saturday to and from Male, during August

we have been rebooked on Saturday (instead Wednesday) from Abu Dhabi to Male (flight EY278) and on Saturday (instead Friday) from Male to Abu Dhabi (flight EY279)

for what I know, no any daily flight until the end of August.

rvlcr

does anyone know how often etihad updates their operating schedule? they’re still showing 2 daily flights in october, which will for sure not be the case since they’re still operating just 1 flight 2/3 days a week which has very bad timings for the maldives btw... arriving at 5:20pm means you can’t get to your resort day of if it’s a seaplane teamster...

of course there is still the unadvertised 6 hour layover limit issue which we have no idea when it will be lifted

bdubs7

ugh. Seconded. These new flights to Maldives have terrible timing for us. We're supposed to land in Abu Dhabi Sunday night, even if they added a Monday flight, leaving at 11:20AM is terrible, you would lose another day! Why can't they keep the flight that leaves at like 2:00AM (or sometime around then)?

rvlcr

the timing is disgusting, who wants to land at 6pm! nobody from europe nor the US will be able to make these flights either since all flights land in the afternoon or evening, never so early in the morning, and the 6 hour layover limit will most likely be in effect.

i just want them to update their october schedule so that we can officially get a refund and re book either on TK or EY. very frustrating how they are taking it month by month rather than 2/3 months at a time.

rvlcr

FINALLY received our cancellation confirmation with EY. They automatically re booked us for flights on different days as if that wouldn’t cause any issues, smh.

they’ve kept the ridiculous 11:55am departure - 5:20pm arrival for october, which literally nobody wants.

will phone them to get a refund and bye bye etihad.

bdubs7

SEem like they fixed so that's it now a EY 278 leaves at 1:45AM and gets in by 7:10AM. Unfortunately for me, not available on Mondays (like pre-covid) so still doesn't work for me, but this is still positive for those it does work for.

rvlcr

so, another change on EY flights to MLE... used to be Tue/Fri/Sat for the month of September but it now appears to be Tue/Fri/Sun for the month of october. crossing my fingers and toes that the friday flight doesn’t get canceled since that is the one we are on.

really crazy that they’re doing cancelations 20 days out...like, figure it out?

also it seems like the 6 hour layover limit has been scrapped? They are definitely selling flights with layovers up to 7-8hours now...

bdubs7

i only see a tuesday and friday flight now for october for every week but the last where it shows flights for every day (obviously not updated yet). Where do you see the sunday flight?

EDIT: just saw what you mean on Etihad's website, but it's not loading for some reason on google flights... intersting... Ugh. I really needed the monday flight to restart