Does anyone have experience with refunds from Saudia? I am booked on a domestic flight with SV, and they have changed the date of my flight from 12 December to 14 December, which does not work for me. On their website, they still sell a flight for 12 December. Same flight, but different departure time, which would work well for me. But when I call their call center, they tell me that there are no seats available on the flight. I have called five times already. Now, I am tempted just to book a new flight even if it is slightly more expensive, and ask for a refund of the other flight. But I recently had a refund experience for a voluntary cancellation with SV that makes me hesitate. I had to go through several hoops (ask for EMD, try refund on the website, which does not work, call again, send it to an email address, from which I have neither gotten a response, nor seen the money after three weeks of waiting). Therefore, I fear that I will just pay for an additional ticket, but not see the money for the original ticket. Any advice?

No experience with refunds. But I do have the experience customer service is horrible to reach, with anything being a bit complex like re-routing and the like costing countless times of calling, apping and so on. The website, app or chat usually cannot help, their Saudi number reroutes to what I think is a call centre that cannot help, in the end I had success with the local France office (I lived temporarily in France at the time) but only at the 3rd try. I was initially downgraded J -> Y but when I noted they again had a plane with J in the end they rebooked me to original fare class. My guess your best bet is hang up, call again until with a local office until you talk to a live agent willing to put you on your original flight.

Thank you so nuch, atflyer, for sharing your experience. It took me a lot of HUCA, but I was finally successful. I was able to reach an agent in the US who spoke good English, and it took him only a few minutes to resolve the issue. Quite astonishing how it works sometimes.

Thanks for sharing - looks like local offices are the way to go.

I've booked to fly SIN-JED-BHX in June. They just notified me that JED-BHX is slightly retimed (no problem) but on checking my booking the SIN-JED leg has disappeared. From the booking engine it looks like Saudia are stopping the SIN route after the end of March. No notification of this more important change, and trying to work out how to get a refund through the website and whatsapp is sending me round in circles with the eventual dead end that I have to select a Saudi bank. Hoping the sales office in SIN is still operational and will try them tomorrow.

Alternatively have them rebook you to another airline if they really stop serving SIN. Several stories on other threads where people were successful in doing so (LAX-JED, downgrade to all Y aircraft on TUN-JED) and ended up with better connections (and of course non-dry airlines). Unless of course you simply want your money back....

Thanks. SIN office said they needed to get head office to call me back and it sounds like rebooking to another airline will be offered. They confirmed Saudia won't be flying to SIN for the summer schedule. Now just waiting to see if they really will call back.

Looks like SV mgmt must be doing some serious route profitability assessment. LAX which was looking to be suspended (zero'd out inventory for weeks before being suspended) seems to be even further curtailed now. Other than the inconvenience, wonder if SV should serve SIN as a tag on to KUL (supposedly the favorite destination for Muslims in SE Asia).

Well, they did call back but they didn't offer alternative carriers and just told me to email for a refund. I wish I'd also asked about compensation but I was half asleep and the lady was very hard to communicate with in English. According to the airline T&Cs it looks like I should also be entitled to compensation equal to 100% of the value of the ticket. Under GACA rules however I'm not entitled to compensation because it's more than 60 days before the flight.

Any recent experiences on how long it takes to get a ticket refunded after having made a request via the dedicated page on the website (https://refund.saudiairlines.com/tkt/?lang=en)? I logged mine over a week ago and it still says "processing" when checking the status. Is it meant to take this long?