I think most people who suggest pax to arrive to the airport early and get Airalo SIM card are missing the my main points

1. It should not take 3 hours of phone calls to reschedule a flight (even if missing flight was passenger fault). The agents who were stuck with some ticketing / pricing issue were either clueless or did not have power to overwrite the system or get supervisor on line who could.

2. Missing flights happen more often than you think and it should have procedures to be solved quickly and preferably on the spot. I never missed a flight myself because I was late to the airport, but I missed flights number of times on separate tickets on different airlines, (which was completely within my expectations because I was taking some risk by saving money). I lived in USA and flew mostly Delta and United. In most of my missed flights the solutions were found on the spot without making calls and often without even paying any change fees. When it required a phone call to reservations, the agents were empowered to do magic to get me rebooked asap. So perhaps my expectations for Emirates were a bit too high after flying Delta and United?

3. Emirates is flying a lot of passengers who live in poorer countries who may not have an easy way to pay with credit card over the phone (for example transaction may require phone OTP verification and phone may not work in foreign country). Also countries with sanctions like Iran or Russia etc. Based on my conversation with last agent, such ticket changes can not even be done with payment link and require card payment on the phone, which makes it even more difficult.