It was priceless! Having just moved to Dubai and just made Gold on EK in the space of 5 months, I was looking forward to my first flight as a Gold member.

I had booked economy seats for a quick weekend trip to COK. I had a date change supplement to pay for having changed our travel date by one day. Having paid the 700 AED at the ticket counter, I get to check in and get told that the flight was oversold and I had been bumped .... wait for it ... to the very flight I was initially booked on and that I had just paid to change from!! What made it bad was that it was just a long weekend trip and so was it was a short visit to begin with and was now cut even shorter. I needed to go anyway since it was a 70th birthday celebration.

We were offered the hotel stay (which I did not take up as we live in Dubai) and free economy flights to the destination but the whole experience was .. well ... not shocking but certainly unpleasant and surprising. To the credit of the desk staff, some were professional, apologetic and handled it well ... except for the lady at the Economy desk that told me that I should be very grateful that I had a seat on the new flight since that was full as well!!