Good news indeed. I've just submitted the refund request form for my business R/T ticket MNL-MXP departing March 24.

Hopefully it will go through without problem.

According to my newest chat with Etihad it can take up to 21 working days for the refunds to have the amount reflected on the account.

Find it interesting that all bloggers hyping EY F & residence are now silent in assisting/informing their audiences in how to navigate rebooking options & refunding possibilities. Thus i really appreciate everyone's efforts and time here

I agree with the OP: EK seems to handle it better than EY & QR.

Well, I just received an email advising that my flight had now been shifted to 01 April, and that I could request a refund if this wasn't suitable. There was the option to take an Etihad credit voucher as well as a cash refund.

So I went to manage booking and requested a cash refund, and received an email in response confirming the cash refund to my credit card.

A bit of a circuitous process, but it seems to have got there in the end.

It's interesting that when I check AUH to and from random destinations like NYC and BKK starting next week — and I'm sure Revenue Management has had a real fun job over the last couple of weeks — there seems to be availability for new reservations in both Main and Business... and that's why I wonder if most of the "evacuation" of stranded folks has been pretty much taken care of. So it is thus also interesting that they would offer refunds of any flights through 3/31... yet sell new tickets. Therefore I presume it is as a courtesy for those who are skittish about flying through that airspace and also those whose schedules may have been disrupted because obviously they are still far far away from any semblance of normal ops.

Curiously also, their inaugural AUH-CLT non-stop is still showing seats for sale starting next week which is the day of the 1st flight. Wonder if it'll actually start as scheduled. I for one will be waiting to see if it does since we are scheduled to fly the return route a month after the inaugural flight which will put us in the 3rd week of April, connecting through AUH on to India on an AA ticket so if something happens I'll cancel or rebook with AA, but I've also booked a refundable contingency backup through Europe.

On the way back we are again flying from Malé to the US through AUH and that is in early May but simply out of an abundance of caution we've still have booked a safety backup via the Pacific which is circuitous and not ideal but will get us back one way or the other. EY has the best schedules (especially from somewhere like Malé which is not heavily serviced by other carriers) and has the most efficient connections to the US East Coast so we are hoping we can fly our original schedules both ways. Of course, IF they actually do fly! 🤞 🤞 🤞

I saw this last week 👇

https://www.msn.com/en-us/travel/new...te/ar-AA1XnYTu

They have switched the timings and the layover is now 2 hours. I'm not sure if I should click that "confirm" button or not. What do you think? Having been in a similar COVID situation where accepting stuff removes options otherwise available at a later point. It clearly says booking changed so I guess us confirming is optional? ("We have rebooked you on the following flight:")

Yes, that's what I got, so I cancelled for a refund immediately. To me, cash in hand was worth a lot more than the (maybe) promise of a flight on a date I didn't want anyway. With the cash you have a lot of other options.

UPDATE

Late Friday afternoon 13th they cancelled my morning flight of 20th. Spent 6 hours trying to talkl to someone and was just flobbed off with get a refund and sort yourself out. Surely they have a legal duty of care to re-route pasengers . Whats annoying, I went online only to see they are still selling tickets for the flights out of MAN 19 and 20th

Under which regulation would this duty to re-route passengers fall? EU261 excludes political situations. How did you determine that they are still selling that flight? The booking form on the website is only an offer. The sale is usually only completed once the payment has been accept.

I am not a fan of how Etihad handles the whole situation. But I am also a fan of facts.

EU261, and its UK equivalent which would be used here, only rules out compensation due to the political situation. Right to care and rerouting is still required.

QR are still selling lots of flights which are extremely unlikely to fly.

It now appears there is now a slight increase in flights and consistency. On Friday (13th march) Etihad realised seven days of planned flights on their website. Previously they had only been giving two or three days worth. The two legs I want to fly are now included in this list. I'm now monitoring these flights for reliability and logging the data.

Daily flights from MAN re-started yesterday (SAT 14th March). This is EY 78 which departs at 05:05 which is over three hours earlier than before the conflict started. The weird thing is that the inbound flight to MAN (EY77) arrives AFTER the outbound flight from MAN. This means there is an Etihad plane parked overnight at MAN. It's probably also the reason EY77/EY78 have used bus gates for passengers so far.

Please see the screenshot of a document I created regarding parked aircraft at MAN:

A= Arrival, D=Departure.

Mike

It appears to be the AUH-TPE leg that is causing the problem. I see no issues with MAN leg. I assume this is EY898 which departs AUH at 20:55 and arrives TPE at 08:30. Etihad released seven days of planned flights on Friday (13th March). This flight is not showing in that list although it only goes up to 19th March. I also used the Etihad flight status checker and it's showing no data for the flight although it only goes up to 17th March at the moment. From what I can see, there have been no flights on that route since the conflict started except perhaps on 14th March. I'm getting conflicting info as other tracking sites aren't showing it. Perhaps an unpublished repatriation flight.

I envy your patience !
Personally i would go screaming mad, wishing you good luck and thanks for making the MAN-aircraft parking schedule.

Thanks for this, so you are saying re-routing is their legal obligation ?