Etihad Airways has a great inflight product in first class and business class, and historically it has been pretty easy to redeem points for these experiences. In particular, Etihad partners with American AAdvantage, Air Canada Aeroplan, and Air France-KLM Flying Blue, meaning you can redeem these points currencies for travel on Etihad.
Continue reading: How Etihad Restricts Partner Award Availability: What A Mess
Share your questions, experiences, and thoughts below.
Aeroplan has also been really bad about phantom availability on ethical recently. I’ve seen many flights from the US via Doha to Malè which don’t actually exist when trying to book or calling Aeroplan.
Wow... all the last minute first class from AUH to Paris is no longer there. Bummer, I wasn't hoping to try it. At least I got to fly etihad first out of IAD in 2022.
Alaska has also been having visibility issues across partners as well. So many examples of AA showing a partner award and Alaska not.
Just part of the enshittification of the points world. Cathay F only available through their own program, Qantas is a crapshoot (although I did recently see a last minute award on AA), Lufthansa F awards shrinking from 15 days to 3-4 days out, etc.
If the Etihad program itself had a reasonable cancel policy this would be a non-issue. But as it stands I simply will not book through that program under any circumstances. It's insane.
Second above comment.
The nonexistent partner availability with the outrageous cancellation policy with Etihad Guest makes this airline a no-go for now.
@Lucky Will you also write an article how CX ist restricting award availability for all POS in the USA
@ Kevin -- Restricting award availability to partner programs, or for its own program?
Agree here, i transferred points to Aeroplan as I saw award space from DOH to JFK august 2025, which turned out to be phantom award space
OK here we go 😉
Aeroplan on Etihad.
Will allow economy and business even more than 30 days out if its within the middle east (Seychells and Maldives seem to be included) So TLV-AUH or AUH - BAH can be booked all year. And also as of very recently between middle east and India. So say AUH-DEL or even TLV-BOM Via AUH can be booked in J all year.
Any other region you can only book business within 30 days. Economy seems to be available throughout the year.
AA only allows business within 30 days even within middle east.
Funny quirk. AA is blocking all Etihad flights in and out of Israel. So TLV - AUH and vise versa is not bookable even within 30 days and even when partner awards are available.
My sense is:
- Near complete block on AA (& Sabre) with US POS in business class
- Fairly big block on all other partners but Amadeus GDS airlines (BA, Finnair, Qatar) seems to have some availability close in - a bit like AA pre-Covid.
Exactly! There is a massive discrepancy between award availibilty when booking between through sabre airlines (AA and AS) compared to e.g. BA
and it seems like they are taking advantage that most folks forget the slow boiling pot they are sitting in is in fact, not a good place to be.
Remember AS blocked all awards within 3 days and promise it was "temporary"? Yeah, now months later, it is still the case for any award that does not touch North America. Intra-EU, South America, last minute QF domestic, JL awards for HND-LHR, you name it. You cannot even book economy. Yet I do not see even one person that remembers this "temporary measure", let alone any big blogs talking about it.
Maybe I'm a little paranoid, but like FlyingHippo below, I wonder how many of those Aeroplan awards are phantom. I feel burned lately by Alaska - never used it before the Hawaiian merger, but I searched a bunch of awards that would be useful to me (on AA metal) and saw good prices on Alaska, so I signed up for a CC. Now that I have Alaska miles and try to book, I get a "we can't reserve space on this partner flight, try another..." message over and over. Call Center is no help and didn't have a great explanation other than a reference to an internal memo about partner award issues. And this is despite the same AA flight awards showing available on BA, so it's not truly "phantom". Just an Alaska issue.
So now I'm paranoid that any time I see award availability I won't be able to actually book. But there is no way to know for sure until I've earned or transferred miles to the FF program.
Airlines would rather let seats go out empty than give them to their frequent flier members. It's great on paper but eventually people will stop wanting to earn points that can't ever be redeemed. I'm sitting on millions of points and it's hard to spend them on flights at any decent value.
I am just happy that I tried its all premium products long ago when aa had full access and cheap rate. If I remember correctly I flew ey first apartment from auh to syd for 60k miles and to Tokyo for 40k miles....but the products are not that inspiring to do it again....
Etihad really screwed the pooch on this approach. Strange to even think that Aeroplan is SECOND in terms of being an absolute mess--so that's saying something.
At least Etihad has a better soft and hard product than Air Canada, so I guess that's a silver lining; sure, the reward program may be bad, but at least the actual product is good...different story with that dumpster fire of a mess they call Aeroplan/Air Canada.
Is this a US GDS block or a geographic block? As in a VPN can be used to get around it, or AA/AS is blocked period.
I noticed last year JetBlue had some decent Etihad business awards (minus any draconian cancellation fees) but now I only see economy. Lucky any reason you didn’t discuss JetBlue?
Strange, that's not been my experience. then again, maybe you're trying to book weeks/months in advance. I never attempt to book flights with points, until 7 days before the flight. So I get "flights at decent value".
Both Etihad and AirCanada make booking flights on their own metal via their own FF programs prohibitive/a sick joke. At least AC Aeroplan has other reasonably priced partner awards. I can see no logical reason why any sane person would embrace Etihad Guest.
The management of Etihad Guest is ultimately doing their airline no favors as it slips off the radar of the flying public, especially the consumers of blogs such as this. A management shakeout would be welcome.
Oh, it's a bit dissembling to use Indian destinations in the AA and Aeroplan examples in this article. In way too many very available redemptions the likes of BOM and DEL feature as transits in long-haul itineraries on Aeroplan particularly. Quick 'n easy examples to fill out the blog maybe?
It's not just Etihad with American Airlines. Cathay Pacific and Qantas business award seats are rarer than a jackalope, Japan Airlines is getting there and Qatar is getting sparse as well. Aside from Royal Jordanian and the outrageously priced BA, the AA award program is pretty anemic when it comes to international partner redemption. And don't get me started on AA's ridiculous demand pricing on their own business award seats.
On Aeroplan, Etihad f.ex. MLE-FRA shows in C sometimes, but when you go through the booking process there is an error message… so I suppose that’s „phantom space“. I tried three different dates/cities.
I used 70k Aadvantage miles to fly AUH-YYZ-MIA Business Class on 12.09. Lucky me!!!
I'm disappointed the author didn't mention the giant caveat in the room, which is that Etihad is known for fake availability. When you do find availability, it's very important to call the airline and confirm before moving points because over 90% of the time the availability is fake and the seats don't exist. It's a well know fraud at Etihad and this website has a duty to warn readers. I nearly transferred 600k miles just before seeing this warning on Reddit, I called the airline, and sure enough the seats showing up don't actually exist. I would have been trapped.
Did you call Etihad or Aeroplan? I'm in a similar position where I see availability on Aeroplan but worried about phantom seats