Yesterday, I took a flight from Dubai to Malta, in business class. (The routing was DXB-MLA-TIP.)

My bag (along with those of some others) missed the aircraft, fair enough, it happens sometimes.

However, despite a 6 hour flight, I was blissfully ignorant of the situation when arriving at the carousel at Malta.

Half an hour later, the penny dropped that no more bags were coming off the aircraft. It took a while to realise this, as there were still quite a few others waiting (in the same boat and a relatively high % of those who got off at this intermediate stop) and my assumption was that the baggage handlers were making a second trip.

Turns out that the baggage handling agent had a list of people whose bags were still in DXB, but didn't bother to make any PAs or put up a sign to explain some bags were not going to arrive.

Apart from wasting 45 minutes needlessly, I was also unable to make a conference call with a client and had to reschedule to Monday, thus inconveniencing them.

I find that EK's customer service has slipped dramatically over the last 5 years, it's seriously on a par with the low cost airlines these days.

Normally, I use EY to/from the Gulf and yesterday was an exception - the whole experience made me realise just how superior EY is to EK and I'll be avoiding EK in the future, wherever possible.