No room at the inn says Etihad Airways

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Etihad Airways wants to avoid airport sleepover situations at all costs.

A disgruntled Kuwait-based travel agent has expressed dismay at an Etihad Airways policy that prevented him from booking a group of 150 Filipino labour workers on a flight from Manila to Kuwait via Abu Dhabi.

The agent, who wished to remain unnamed, told ATN he was shocked when Etihad refused to honour his booking, which came to KD 350 (US $1314) per head, claiming it would not allow these passengers to stay at Abu Dhabi Airport in transit for 12 hours as the schedule demanded.

"I was told that the airline would not accommodate these passengers, which is wrong because IATA rules state that for transit times of 10 hours or more, passengers must be provided with accommodation," said the outraged agent.

"What was worse, because Filipinos cannot get visas on arrival into the UAE, they could not leave the airport during the 12-hour transit and find accommodation of their own accord.

"I was then told that Etihad did not allow passengers in this situation to stay in transit for 12 hours and that if I did book them onto the flight, they would not be allowed to board because of this rule. I simply could not believe it."

The agent described Etihad's rules as "discriminatory" and said he could not believe that a carrier voted as the ‘world's best' across many awards categories in many award schemes could be allowed to endorse this policy.

An Etihad Airways spokesman told ATN the carrier did not take bookings when there was a transit time of more than eight hours.

"There is no point in people staying in transit for more than eight hours because it's just too long to wait and we don't want our passengers to do that," he said.

However, Etihad would accommodate passengers who were stuck at Abu Dhabi Airport for more than eight hours through no fault of their own due to delayed onward departures, he added.

The spokesman also noted that it was unfortunate the Manila flight arrived at Abu Dhabi at 8.45pm, just a little too late to connect to the next Kuwait flight at 9.05pm. The passengers would have had to wait until 10.10am the following morning, he explained.

"We do try to maximise our connection opportunities and on some flights we will wait for passengers, but this was too tight," he said.

"If it was a connection to Bahrain it would have been a different matter as we operate four flights daily (as opposed to twice daily to Kuwait)."

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