I had a Flex Plus booking with a transit on the outbound and a stopover of a few days on the inbound at DXB.
I wanted to arrive in DXB a few days earlier to have more time in Dubai.

When I tried to make the change on the website, the system asked for an additional $150 per person. That seemed odd, because when I checked the itinerary using a dummy reservation, there was no change in price.

I called the EK call center, and the agent quoted the same price. I tried to explain that there shouldn’t be a price difference, but he insisted it had something to do with “married segments”—that entering DXB earlier affects the pricing of the outbound from DXB. My attempts to explain that a Flex Plus ticket shouldn’t incur additional costs unless there’s a fare difference didn’t help.

I was about to HUCA, but something the agent said about one segment influencing the other made me think I should try changing both segments at once, not just one.

So I did. I asked the system to move both segments to a day later than my intended new dates. It worked—no extra charge. Then I moved them again to my preferred earlier dates, and again, there was no extra charge.

Since we’re a party of several people, I ended up saving a few hundred dollars.