My complaint:
In Aug 2022 I booked directly with Oman Air SIN – AMM for April 2023, consisting of SIN-KUL, KUL-MCT, and MCT-AMM with the exact same flights for my return to SIN. Only the return portion from AMM – SIN has been booked for my wife as well under a different booking reference.
Based on this connection and the arrival and departure times, we booked a complete Jordan round trip, including various hotel bookings etc – prepaid!
Aug 30, my wife received a call from an Oman Air agent (Ms Seeco?), informing her, that the flight KUL MCT has been cancelled. The offered alternative was completely unacceptable as it included date changes, 9hrs layover in MCT and a total flight time of over 25hrs! We never received this information and the alternatives via email and we couldn’t do anything but declining the alternative offer during the same call. Until today(!), I did not receive any info from OA about the cancellation of MY flight! 2 days ago, I called their customer service in Oman via Skype. After ~15-minute waiting pattern, I was informed that Skype calls (internal policy) are not allowed and I had to call them again from my mobile. Another 15 minutes waiting until a friendly agent Jamal took my call. Told him that I wanted to check whether my bookings are still valid. Initially, he ed that departure and arrival are still ok as previously booked. Then, asking a bit more in detail, he found out that “there have been some changes” and it turned out that my round trip became useless as any alternatives offered through OA would bring me to AMM 2 days late and my return to SIN would happen on a Monday instead of the booked and needed Saturday!
When asked why I have not been informed until today, he couldn’t answer and promised to forward my complaint to the relevant department to call me back without any further delay. Which did not happen until this very day! This call alone cost me USD40 as I called from Singapore.
I have sent a complaint to OA via their contact form, I received a wordy response from a Senior Assistant Guest Relations (Khalsa Al Bahri), firstly elaborating about the service excellence, then offering
Free date change on the next available flight (??? Not at all my request)
Full refund with no cancellation charge on your unused ticket (which I consider a joke. They cancel, not me!)
I responded to him, stressing my request to offer a suitable solution as the actual situation sees me with drastic financial consequences.
Suggested solution:
There are flight connections with other airlines, leaving and returning (SIN-AMM-SIN) on my exact booking dates. I would expect OA to cover us for the fare differences as they broke a closed and paid transportation contract for both my own and my wife’s ticket.
I find such OA behaviour - offering nicely priced flightsflight connections that are just cancelled without any explanation - highly untrustworthy and at the borderline of legal business behaviour. Customers with such bookings are either bound to whatever (useless) alternative flights with OA or are left with a refund that does not at all cover any collateral damage, not to talk about the need to find and pay for a suitable replacement flight.
