My Experience Redeeming Etihad Miles On Air Serbia

It's me the "lucky" winner! I was successful to book additional ticket for my wife and a lap child using Etihad miles the other day. What surprised me the whole process was all manual. The agent ended calculated wrong mileage for the lap infant only added 1% of the adult ticket to my ticket. I'm really really lucky with Air Serbia. Thanks again!!

Lucky, thanks for this, very helpful!

Could you share, as a datapoint, how long your MR transfer took to reach your Etihad Guest account.

I'm thinking of redeeming on AirSerbia FRA-BEG for the end of this month, but am not sure if the miles will make it in time before the Etihad advance cut-off date for issuing that award.

Also, any idea if it Citi TY points transfer any faster than Amex MRs?

@lucky Did you book Air Serbia Round trip. If not, are you planning on coming straight back to the US on another airline after you go to Serbia or, are you going more places to take advantage of cheap fares to review new Airlines

@ Hugh B -- Just one way, as we're flying another airline in the other direction. Stay tuned for the details on that!

@ Zed -- Membership Rewards is typically instant, while Citi ThankYou takes a few days.

@ Raulf -- Hah, AWESOME!

Ben, do you know if Air Serbia kept the interior configuration of the Jet Airways a330 or was it reconfigured to JU's specifications?

I just finished a conference in Belgrade. It's a wonderful city with great food, architecture, and people. Be careful of taxi scams from the airport and tourist populated areas. Legitimate taxi drivers are professional and helpful, even if they don't speak English, and they're incredibly cheap. Scam taxis (I know from experience), charge 10x or more legitimate fares. I got scammed twice, it wounded my ego more than anything, but it also taught me some lessons (i.e. legit drivers won't seek you out, etc.)

Many places will order taxis for you, and the airport has "taxi info desks" before and after customs that will insure you don't get scammed. If you go before customs you won't have to wade through a crowd of scam drivers to get to it.

I hope you get a chance to visit the Air Serbia premium lounge. I flew Alitalia to Rome which shares their lounge. It's small, but comfortable with an excellent hot buffet and very friendly staff. Either way, enjoy this historic and rich country.

@Lucky - Semi-related question:

Is it better to book Etihad First Apartments with EtihadGuest Miles after transferring from AmEx MR, or to use AAdvantage miles? Is one more lucrative or cost-saving?

@Adam it depends. AA miles are harder to get via transfers whereas EY miles are easier. EY's award prices are distance based too whereas AA goes by region.

@Zed Amex are instant, but Citi legit took 2 weeks for me

@David W: Thanks for that. I guess it depends on what I have a stockpile of (EY miles or AA miles) and where I'm looking to go. In your opinion, if I wanted just to fly EY Apartments as cheaply mile-wise as possible, which would be easiest? JFK-AUH with AA?

@Adam Yeah AA miles would be best. You can also tack on another domestic flight to/from JFK as well as another EY flight to/from AUH if you wanted to.

I had a good experience booking with Etihad Guest. I recently redeemed 51000 Etihad miles for a one way business award on Oman air on FRA-BOM sector.

"The cost for a one-way business class award ticket from Belgrade to New York was 64,082 Etihad Guest miles plus 53EUR, which is extremely reasonable."

I don't understand the "extremely reasonable" part. It's more expensive than just about every mainstream program (AC, DL, AA, UA...). And it's almost FOUR TIMES of their SN rate if I did my math right.

@italdesign maybe you are comparing to economy award miles prices? AA for example is 57,500 miles one way for a saver business award to Europe.

Forgot to say-- the "reasonable" part is probably due to the ease of acquiring MR/TYP that can be transferred to Etihad.