Etihad Airways — a trip to never forget for all the wrong reasons

Hello team,

I am not the person who usually complains, but this incident has moved me to let people be aware of what i am about to tell you. Usually, when you plan an expensive trip one ensures that nothing must go wrong and so was the plans to my honeymoon.
We were expecting a memorable and once in a lifetime experience kind of trip, given that we are not so privileged to travel to such places often as a couple. The cost and the time away from the schedule is very real indeed.
This trip turned out to be a disaster of sorts for us through no fault of our own – believe me, we tried to set things right and are still trying.
What was to be a special trip, that used up most of our savings turned out to be a survival test in a foreign land.

Let me go straight to the facts.

When we arrived at paris cdg, we landed to discover we had lost all our luggage, i. E medicine, food and clothing in transit. This happens to any unlucky chap and sure we could have lost more than our survival kit.

We raised a complaint about baggage loss with etihad airways. The complaint no is “cdgey30224” and i have attached the copy of it.

We also spent around two hours tracking the luggage while panicking if we were going to make it through this trip after all the expenses for bookings and reservations.
This delay disrupted all our plans causing a domino effect, and we lost our money that we used for reservation for effiel tower summit ticket $110.
We had to spend a bomb on food, clothing and medicines, and little did we know that the bills would be such a nightmare.
We forgot the whole reason we went there, lost amidst this confusion.
Our trip was pretty long, and coming back to india would cause a bigger loss, so we continued to try and enjoy however little we could.
Europe is not like india, everything is very expensive for a person traveling from india.
Food had become the biggest concern. And we had ended up spending more than 1, 00, 000 inr on just food.
Our additional spendings :
1. Cloths
2. Medicines
3. Additional bags

If you add it up, it is around 2, 00, 000 inr.
The first thing i did was after we came back from that pocket drilling nightmare was to find my bags, who wants to be separated from their worldly possessions even if it was not used at the right time.
I could not find my bag, in-spite of numerous calls and intimations.
Finally, when i reached bangalore, i personally went to the airport to look for it as i highly suspected my bag was lying somewhere unattended.
To my dismay, it was right there where they usually collect lost baggage, prominently visible. The person whom i spoke to did not even bother to look and dismissed my request to locate it.

Then started the horrors of trying to claim for all this loss –for no fault of my own, please note.
In these moments of trauma and agonizing tolerance, i was asked to submit bills for the claim.
I could not afford to shop so extensively in europe for all my needs but was forced to purchase things off the street mostly (Which were also not cheap), and i could not get any bills for the same.
For over two months of back and forth complaint filing and prolonged investigations coupled with much harassment, their final deal of settlement is 15, 000 inr, which was not even close to what we had to spend so absurdly.

I have written this post not just for my loss, but to inform everyone who saves up like me and cautiously to spend it on travel with family, for whom time and money is of crucial value and for those who are not aware of such fraud that these kinds of horrible etihad airline companies do.

Their lack of providing basic support to young and middle class like people like me is quite shameful and in the event of proven blunders on their part, they do not even take responsibility for their own actions.
Kindly spread the word by sharing this message with whomever you think is required to know.

-prashanth naidu