Price

I have often seen EK advertise SIN-DEL flights for about 500 bucks all in, but it goes via DXB, whereas SQ could charge over 1000. All in SGD, but again half the price with double the flying time.

As well as price, many of these passengers will not be picking their own carrier, but rather having their employer choose for them - which is another reason EK treats many of them so badly.

Not that this is unique to EK in the region (although different to SV, who have traditionally treated anyone non-Saudi terribly...)

Sadly you get the impression from some of the posts, that some Emirates staff are racist towards passangers of South Asian descent? :(

Precisely why taking Skytrax seriously is not too clever IMHO. WHo ever posts to a site to praise anything? OK it happens, but not terribly often.

Kinda, yes but it is more complex than that.

There is institutionalised discrimination against the low wage workers particularly from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh & poss Sri Lanka and that is rampant throughout the Middle East - not an issue confirmed to EMirates by any stretch. Most of these people have absolutely no say on who they fly on, but frankly would get the same treatment on QR, SV, KU, EY etc etc. Totally unacceptable, but its not just EK, thats for sure. The airlines take full advantage of the fact that many of these passengers wouldn't have a clue how to argue their corner or that they wouldn't have known they had an aisle seat in the first place and can easily shift people. I have been on flights where passengers couldn't read the boarding card so you can see exactly what the airlines are doing in the region. The irony is of course that quite often when this discrimination takes place, it is a check in / gate agent from the same region / country as the person being discrimanted against!

Finally though, I have spoken to a fair few EK crews in my time and they confirm that flying to the Indian subcontinent is their least favourite job. Why? Well, the above mentioned passengers are not the reason. One is that they do say DXB - DEL and then have to do the return in the one shift. Other reasons? There were a few minor things (guess they all pile up) and one major......

There is a well known, institutionalised discrimination against South Asian people throughout the Gulf states. Still, millions of South Asians live, work and travel there.

The airline acts no different than any other service organisation in the region. Caucasians/Arabs will always get priority over Indians/Filipinos/Africans.. Try getting a table at a mall restaurant in Dubai for example - no Indian/Filipino/African will be seated as long as a Caucasian/Arab is still waiting, even if the Caucasian/Arab arrives after them. They will often just ignore the first group and deal with the second instead. It's just the way things work there.

Well, the large shunk of Emirates' profits comes from F and J pax, which are usually not from poor countries.

Well....not really. Poor countries often have very rich people - for whatever reason.

I was led to believe by crew that those were the cabins they hated working on the very routes being discussed here. I have seen why that may be.....though that is not exclusive to the Subcontinent.

Institutional discrimination also exists within South Asia itself. Ever see how some wealthy Indians treat poor ones or somebody of a lower caste? In any case, this thread is veering way off course.

I'd hardly call having a seat changed on a mid-range flight a nightmare. With silver status, the passenger could eat in the lounge during the connection. I am a vegan myself and have always had my meal boarded-after flying Emirates for over 10 years. Can't say the same for any other airline.

On a flight last week I ordered a raw vegetarian meal and the flight attendants thought the meal had not been boarded as there was no "hot" meal to go with the tray. They "found" it soon thereafter upon realizing that the salad was the main meal. EK's raw meals are incredibly uncreative--just cut up vegetables---but sometimes it is better to eat a lighter meal than a regular vegan one. For somebody that is just veg--they always have extras as half the plane on many flights are vegetarian. Again in the worse case, waiting for 6 hours to eat in the lounge is not the end of the world.

My seat changed o flight this month from DXB to DAR due to a downgage of aircraft. I check my seats a few days before to ensure that the aircraft type is still the same. In any case, it was not a problem as many people--including myself were upgraded to business as Y was oversold.

This was partly what I was getting at.

The intention of posting such a post is straight-forward - let those EK people who monitor these websites see it so they may take an action such as giving a few +0000 mileage points as a compensation.

That's why the person left his/her PNR at the bottom of the OP.

Perhaps a few days later we would see the same person writing another post praising EK for an excellent customer experience handling ;)

redacted redacted

+1 ^

it's surely more than an impression

Whilst I would be p*ssed off if my veggie meal had not been loaded....there are ways to behave and ways not to. Yelling and screaming is not usually going to result in the best outcome.

On the flip side of course, are the passnegers themselves. I have seen some of the most vile, lazy and plain rude passengers i have ever witnessed on flights to and from the sub continent. Get me this, get me that, move the air vent for me etc etc. On my last flight a chap couldn't be bothered to lift his fat a*s off his seat to put his 20kg of hand luggage in a locker - leaving a 5ft and something cabin crew lady to do it by dumping it in the aisle. Now....multiply that by several passengers per flight and then find out catering have screwed up their loading. I would probably be in poor humour too frankly. If you think this is just EK flights, then you are mistaken....this is the way on most carriers I have seen in the gulf region. You often see the same in the business cabins around Africa also......

No please, no thanks, no civility. Manners cost nothing. Now before I hear the inevitable 'then they shouldn't be in that industry' cr*p, everyone has their tolerance line....someone elses isn't going to be the same as mine.