Etihad won't let me search award flights when logged in

[slodki]

Hi All,

I'm not sure what is going on here - I'm logged into Etihad Awards - (etihadawards.com) and from the member section I navigate to award flight booking - this now takes me to etihad.com and I notice I'm not logged in anymore, so can't search for flights. When I hit the login button on top right hand side, it takes me to etihadawards.com and I'm automatically logged in - try to access award bookings and takes me again to etihad.com and I'm logged back out.

Very strange that it's going around a loop like this?

Any ideas? Tried on Chrome and Safari

 

[trippin_the_rift]

Why bother? I use pexportal

 

[slodki]

Awesome! I'm assuming this searches Etihad Guest availability which can then be booked with AA?

 

[Limewood]

Been trying Pex its offline I think?.

 

[trippin_the_rift]

Awesome! I'm assuming this searches Etihad Guest availability which can then be booked with AA?

It's important to note with partner agreements (ie: not oneworld/skyteam/star alliance) award availability may not be standardised across programs.
Partnerships mean FFPs have greater control of their inventory, who they sell it to and at what price. So if you see Etihad availability through their own site/program it does not mean the same seat can be booked using AA, VA or any other partners' currency.

In fact I expect to see more differentiated pricing in the future as FFPs with high value inventory become more selective and position their inventory which positively discriminates towards their own super-elite customers or which ever FFP pays the most.

This is one weapon in the coughnal of tools FFPs will call on to capture greater market share and extract more revenue from existing non-consumer clients.

In the meantime... it pays to do your research and look around multiple sites to figure out which airline currency is best value to use for a redemption and you're right AA miles were pretty good for a while.

Personally, I'm a VIP tester on pexportal and they have excellent tools which take all the hard yards out of award searching. Basically, the airlines own site will quickly become redundant once you get hooked on this.