Yea, this is true of almost any two city pairs on the EK network. It's very possible that NCL-KUL is cheaper than DXB-KUL in the same class of service. I've seen SIN-JFK fares at half the DXB-JFK fares. And it also varies by class of service. J fares ex-USA are always very high and have huge change and cancellation fees, while you can get some pretty cheap ones from India. I think the best one I've seen is a fully flex one way DXB-SIN fare that cost more than the fully flex return fare for the same days of travel.