Lessons for your friend:

1) Always allow extra time for international flights. Arriving at 8:45pm for a 8:30pm begs the question, how many hours was he/she stuck in traffic? We are all grown adults and stuff happens and miss flights happen. I would have happily paid any change fees/ticket charges as I would have been glad EK didn’t just out right cancel the entire ticket with no value left.

2) Bring an extra smart phone on every trip, and get a local SIM for google maps, phone calls, and local texts for any situation that arises.

3) Lastly, unless it’s a hub of that airline, the staff and counters close up shop at the time of departure. No different than any other country or airline.

Don’t think you’ll get much sympathy from this board.