Nightmare while travelling on Etihad Here is my and my daughter’s experience travelling on Etihad from Chennai to Chicago and to Saint Louis later. A couple of months before I travelled, my husband had travelled along the same route on Etihad and was impressed by the fact that the customs/immigration check for US had happened in Abu Dhabi which made life easier as you only had to remove your luggage at your final destination(in our case STL) Since I was traveling with a 2 year old, my husband paid $100 and purchased Etihad’s meet and greet services at the Abu Dhabi airport. The thought process being it would help me in navigating the airport with less to worry So I land in Abu Dhabi and I met a Meet-and –Greet personnel who was friendly at first. And then after the customary exchanges I requested if I could get a trolley of some kind to push my hand luggage around (a diaper bag, a backpack and I had a toddler). Here is where things starting getting sour. The personnel starts off saying “We can’t provide you that” and I insisted I need something for me to push these things around. And her response, “Well I can get you a handicap wheel chair” and I am thinking, not bad, I can keep my stuff on that while I walk with or carry my toddler. After she gets that I start to put my handbag on it and she says “I can only push you around in the wheel chair and not the luggage”. Initially, I was taken aback and I said I don’t need a wheel chair and after some exchanges I reluctantly sat on the wheel chair. She takes me to the immigration check point and drops me there. After a long wait my turn comes up and the officer was polite at first and asked me, “Do you have any food in your luggage?” and I said “Yes”. Things started spiraling down after this dreaded reply from me. The officer goes “Ma’m I see in your customs form you mentioned No” and I replied back and said, an honest mistake and sorry. And for some reason he decides I cannot understand English?? (I was speaking to this gentleman in English all along, may be not be as crisp or fluently as he was) He says, “Do you understand English?” and he calls this random airport personnel who was non-Caucasian looking and tells him, “This lady here doesn’t understand English, Please translate what I am saying to her”. I again reply back to the customs personnel, “Sir, I made a mistake in the form and I am sorry”. While I am responding, the random airport personnel and the customs officer are having a conversation and all of a sudden the airport personnel says to the officer, “She is (going to) miss the flight and the airport personnel looks at me and says “You have missed the flight”” At this point I am totally flabbergasted as I can clearly see people waiting in line to board the Chicago flight and there is another 30 minutes or so to finish boarding. With a toddler and with all the uncertainty looming I give up to even ask why and what happened and I resigned to the fact I have missed my flight. The airport personnel directs a wheel chair person to take me for rebooking. This wheel chair person was finally friendly to me and explained this happens all the time when they have the flight overbooked and he takes me back out of immigration to rebook. The flight agencies there told me they will get back with me in one hour. I waited for 3 hours and no response. It took me 7 hours of wait before they booked tickets to Chicago for the next day, which means I will be in Abu-Dhabi for the next 24 hours. In the meantime my toddler was very restless waiting and it only added to my nightmare. With a whole day in Abu-Dhabi to kill, I ask for accommodation to stay and the guy (a real joker by name QUIAS H) flat out tells me “We can’t give you accommodation”, With no strength left in me I asked him can I at least get access to a longue where I can freshen up and sleep on couch if available. Reluctantly he provides me access to a longue and I finally had access to food and a place to relax. My toddler finally is refreshed and she gets some sleep and eventually I fall asleep next to her on the couch. It is about midnight now, suddenly a guy wakes me up informing that my longue validity has expired and is only valid for 8 hours. As my kid was still asleep I requested a co-passenger of mine, who also had “missed” the flight and was also in the longue, to take care of my daughter. A big risk to leave your kid with someone whom you don’t know personally but I had to do it since I didn’t want my kid to wake up. I went back to the agency requesting them for accommodation the guy says no. I told the supervisor (read joker QUIAS H) “I always heard Etihad being friendly to kids” and he replies back, “That doesnt mean you have to take advantage of the situation.” No paraphrasing here. He got the situation part alright but I failed to get the “advantage” part. I told him “I didnt miss the flight on purpose just to enjoy the benefits of your longue accommodation.” Finally I realized there is no use of arguing with these bunch of idiots. I told them my flight is at 9.45 AM and to extend the lounge service and I am not moving out. Sometimes even jokers become sane and decides to give access to the longue till 6 AM. It was one exhausting day and a real rude agency. If you decide to travel in Etihad keep praying you never miss your flight. Three of my friends had missed their flights because of over booking. Thanks to their mismanagement we suffer as travelers.
Posted on: Wed, 06 Aug 2014 19:19:23 +0000
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