Oman Air Sindbad status extension
 

Email received yesterday detailing WY's plans for extending status in response to coronavirus, so you might want to check your emails. In summary:

• Those whose status was due to expire in March, April or May will instead have their expiry date extended until 30th June
• Those whose miles or vouchers were due to expire March, April or May will have validity extended for 3 months.

That's it. Somewhat poor for an airline whose operations are totally suspended for the next month (and possibly a lot longer), basically if you were intending to renew your status with flying you had booked in March-May, get lost.

Hi there ... thanks for the info - even though this ‘gesture’ is, as you rightly highlight, way below the level one might reasonably expect of an airline whose operations have ceased totally UFN.

My own situation is that Gold is due for review end November (which could explain absence of any official WY email thus far) ; and I also have two comp Y-J u/g certificates which must be used (= actually flown) by late May ....... obviously not remotely feasible.

The short-term extensions are not attractive to me, and in fact most unsatisfactory. Once things begin to heat up seriously in Oman itself (where I DO enjoy spending time .... it is not merely a stopover point for me), I tend to avoid the country .... so, effectively, that’s any time between mid-May and mid-October.

One can only hope that WY (as several other carriers need to do) will be giving all this some further - much more constructive - thought.

Indeed. I'm also caught up with Gold renewal (August), and have flights booked for June, which I don't expect to happen.

I'm having a hard time finding any travel waiver policy for WY (cancellation refund/voucher or rebooking), Does anyone know what it is?

Not aware myself of any official ‘generic’ policy (although it so happens I don’t have any live bookings) and so I would think you might need to ask WY directly what - if anything - they can offer you. Perhaps they intend to deal with the situation on a case-by-case basis .....

Anyone managed to get a refund from their flights> My flights got cancelled for April from London to Muscat and they are refusing to give a refund (I am gold member with Oman Air).

No, but I probably have this to look forward to shortly for my May flights so interested to hear how it goes. Do you mean they will only let you rebook? Are they asking you to pay the fare difference to rebook?

Good luck.

I have had the same email twice now - Regret to inform you that, we are unable to refund, however you may extend your ticket up to 18 Months validity with 2 free date change

Its so so frustrating the way they are managing the situation and the manner in which they are communicating with their customers.

That's not great but if by "free date change" they mean you can move to any other date with no change in fare then actually that's fairly generous in comparison to what a lot of other airlines are offering currently - plenty are not even offering that but instead only vouchers which are difficult to use or a move to another date for free but subject to additional charges if the fare is more expensive. A lot of airlines are currently trying to get away with not offering refunds - you might have to pursue a credit card charge back for a refund.

Knowing Oman Air I highly doubt the free change doesn't extend to all ticket types and judging by the comments on their twitters account others have been affected.

The fact they are willing to go against EU regulations is annoying, I usually fly QR or OA, and so i am comparing to QR who have been excellent so perhaps they haven't been as bad as other airlines but compared to QR, they have been terrible.

As I alluded to in my post, QR are very much a positive outlier here with close to the best response of any airline globally so if you’re benchmarking WY just to them you’re being somewhat unrealistic and are going to come out of this disappointed. EK are still charging cancellation fees on tickets they cancelled, for example...

Even EU airlines like LH and LX are ignoring the EU Regulations by now (and various EU governments have backed the decision of their national carriers to do this given the exceptional situation). The non-EU airlines that are following the rules are just doing so to provide good customer service by this point.

On the two free date changes : my own understanding, based on a preliminary conversation (I wasn’t actually looking to adjust any bookings at the time) with the support centre a few days ago, is that it is ONLY the standard change fee that is being waived - but that additional costs arising from any fare increase as applicable to the chosen new travel date will be (as is normal) at the customer’s expense. More on the WY website.

So ....... far from ideal. They have been less than flexible with their approach overall, and I’m of the view that they are playing a dangerous game, given what a niche player they are in the wider market. They really should be doing everything they can to maintain goodwill & loyalty, and thus giving themselves the best possible chance to recover when normal travel patterns eventually resume.

One can only hope they will be smart enough to re-think their Covid-19 policy in the coming weeks / months.

Agree, considering that in the normal times they denied me to change a schedule for an R fare when the same R fare was still available and sold and requested to pay twice the price for the higher fare, all against their own fare rules, I suspect the rebooking to be very expensive even with change fee waived.

The specific experience you describe was certainly not good ....... but, setting that apart, I’m not totally convinced that a rebooking, under the stated new policy, would necessarily be more expensive.

I happen to be based in UK and a 7 day return in Y from LHR-MCT in October is pricing up at over 1100 GBP. That’s WAY above ‘normal’ rates. (I don’t travel in Y long-haul so I book J or use miles to upgrade ..... but was just quoting the Y fare by way of example). However ..... a similar trip during March 2021 is showing at a little over 700 GBP.

All fares for forward bookings on WY would appear currently to be very much up in the air (unlike its aircraft)

Finally got around to calling WY about my cancelled ticket for flights this month. Was advised by the call centre that refunds are still 'suspended' but I could have a one time free change to any date later in the year, which is slightly better than the policy above, at least. I didn't ask what then happened when WY cancelled my replacement flight.

I left it for now, obviously 'suspending' refunds for tickets issued for UK departure is not legal, whatever WY think. Will see how things pan out and then I will either rebook for later in the year or initiate a chargeback if it seems like there aren't going to be any flights for a long time. Meanwhile, I am providing WY with a very large interest free loan but the call center agent still spoke to me as if WY was doing me a favour by offering to rebook my flight.

That doesn't surprise me at all.

As I won't be flying anywhere this year (I don't think it will be safe), I guess I'll be taking the chargeback route as well (with Amex).