[Clarkee]

Etihad Airways is engaging in blatant racial discrimination, in that it excludes Iraqi nationals from its STPC policy.

It does not offer Iraqi nationals any hotel accommodation regardless of how long they need to stay in Abu Dhabi Airport, waiting for a connecting flight.

This is despite the fact that other nationalities can avail of this facility. Iraqis are often left to spend 14 hours or longer like zombies in the horribly crowded and woefully ugly Abu Dhabi airport transit area.

In this day and age, it's hard to believe that such neanderthal behaviour still exists !. Etihad should be reprimanded and penalized for this discrimination.

PLEASE, Support Iraq and BLOCKADE ETIHAD (The National Carrier of the UAE).

[jimworcs]

Not sure why you think this only applies to Iraqi"s. this is from their website...

If your itinerary involves a stopover, please note that Etihad Airways provides no accommodation, regardless of the connection time.

[Clarkee]

Originally Posted by jimworcs

Not sure why you think this only applies to Iraqi"s. this is from their website...

Because when I contacted Etihad's head office in Abu Dhabi they said that they do provide STPC to other nationalities,

In fact when I phoned them, they looked up a table to check applicability.

So they DO have an STPC policy for other nationalities !

AND I Googled their STPC policy and indeed it does exist.

[jimworcs]

I think the google link may be out of date. They stopped providing hotels for stopovers in September 2009 from my understanding. It may be possible that they continue to offer a special service to First Class...but their website booking engine has a very clear statement that Etihad no longer provide this service.

I think you may have been misinformed by the customer service representative you spoke to. There is extensive discussion about Etihad's decision to drop this service in the Flyertalk forums, so I am pretty certain that this is no longer offered.