Long time lurker finally signing up!

I recently took a positioning flight on MS from DXB to CAI which landed at Terminal 3. I can confirm EK departs from Terminal 1 at CAI.

To transfer from T3 to T1, you need to go to the MS transfer desk in T3 and ask them to arrange a minivan to take you across to T1. They were somewhat confused and thought it was very weird that I wanted to fly straight back to DXB - I eventually explained it as a visa run.

When you get to T1, you will get to a transit immigration officer. You need to give him a copy of your ticket (you cannot print out your OLCI pass) and he will call someone at EK to come and collect your passport (you leave it at the desk) and provide your onward boarding pass and stamp a transit stamp in your passport (no fees). The transit officer was helpful although was also a bit confused as to why I was travelling straight back to Dubai.

Although it was not made clear, once your passport is left at the transit desk awaiting collection by EK, you are free to explore T1 (it is, unfortunately, a dump) and return a bit later to collect your passport and boarding pass.

Unfortunately the MS flight was considerably delayed which meant that I just missed the connection on EK back to DXB (especially sad as I had received an opup to F). Having said that, the EK staff at CAI were very friendly and simply booked me onto the next flight with no charge, even though I was on a J Flex ticket.

On a more general note, I should point out that Emirates are now heavily limiting availability of cheap fares ex-CAI through the use of married segment logic to Asia - lots of J tickets simply won't price apart from in expensive Flex Plus fares.

They have also considerably increased the price of CAI to USA premium class tickets on 30 December. Returns in J were previously available for less than EGP30k, now they cannot be found for less than EGP40k+.

Hope this helps.