Etihad Airway Ey 0612, we are a family of 4 with my wife’s nephew also traveling with us.On Saturday 28th February 2009 my family and I arrived to Casablanca international airport at 6.30am to depart to Australia. We went through the usual protocol, we arrived to where the passengers were boarding, handed our tickets to the ground crew,
This is where the problem started; we were given the wrong boarding passes without our knowledge. The lady at the boarding department gave us a pass from Abu Dhabi to Australia. We made our way down to the plane. As we arrived into the plane we were given directions on were we were seated.
We made our way only to find that the seats were allocated to two other passengers and my wife was seated 13 isles away. I sat my two kids down aged 4 and 6 and made my way to the front of the plane to discus the problem. I raised the matter with one of the flight attendant only to be told that nothing can be done about it as the flight was full and return to my seat.
I knew for a fact that there were 17 spare seats and five of them were side by side we got into a disagreement, she was rude and disrespectful to me and my wife, called my wife a dog in Arabic and a number of other rude words. I reminded her over and over again that this is there mistake and it has to be rectified before we fly. I requested to speak to the Captain at lease five times and was again rejected that privilege
The plane was delayed for over an hour and a half, we were told either we apologies to the flight attendant or we had to all leave the plane there was no other alternative
By then the other passengers were getting involved with rude comments to the staff about there behavior towards us. We were then told to leave. They removed our luggage left it on the runway sent us on our way. Mind you it was around 9 degrees. No body from the entire Etihad Airway would help us or wanted to get involved.
I am requesting immediate action towards the flight crew and dismissal of Soumia, flight crew chief. This whole matter was handled wrong and this should have never happened we should have never been told to leave the plane.
The seating part we could proberly get over in time, but the part when the flight attendant called my wife a dog, it was in Arabic. She obviously thought that we wouldn’t understand what she was saying because we were speaking in English and also had an Australian passport, that’s when we replayed back in a rude manner, The flight crew didn’t hear her say that or there not admitting it, why would they, again that’s why the captain decided to take action like he did with out the knowledge of what Soumia said to my wife, we were told either we apologies to the flight attendant or we had to all leave.
“Apology after what” calling my wife a DOG (Kalbe) as we returned back the airport, my wife was taken straight to the medical center suffering from an asthma and anxiety attack and we have a certificate from the specialist doctor in Morocco out lining just that..
The customer service manager just stood there as if nothing was going on and was happy for the flight attendant to continue taking control of the situation. Nobody got involved as if she was some kind of queen or something, I have heard many stories about Moroccan flight attendants but not to this extent no other member of the staff would even comment expect her???
Okay so I go to board a flight Casablanca to Abu Dhabi and I have boarding passes Abu Dhabi*to Oz. If there are gate readers at the boarding gate why don’t the boarding passes reject when crew or ground staff attempt to board pax?
If they just manually check the boarding passes why don’t airline staff realize I was giving them boarding passes for my next flight not the first one? All they needed to do was reprint boarding passes for the CAS/AUH sector.
Then even onboard the flight attendants don’t realize they are the wrong boarding passes either, so I go to the seat numbers I have been assigned on the next flight but of course people are legitimately in them because that’s what has been allocated to them on this sector.
I’m at a loss to understand why no-one from Etihad at any stage got on the radio to someone in front of a computer that could verify the correct seats I should have been in on the first flight from CAS to AUH. Surely the flight dispatcher could do a reprint of the boarding passes then run them down to the aircraft.*
I have correspondence from the following members of Etihad and replied with nothing but cover-ups and excuses
Mohamed Abubaker Al Farea
Corporate Safety, Security and Quality
James hogen
CEO of Etihad Airways
Call James on +9712 5111012 or email his Assistant DCraig@etihad.ae
Imran GM
Guest Affairs Department
Barry Green
Head of CRM & Loyalty
Regards
Azam Dabbagh