Nightmare Flying with Emirates....:-(
 

Iam silver memeber with Emirates. Flew with emirates in LHR-DXB-HYD sector.Made pre selection of seats but without my knowledge my seat was changed with no option left on board. Had a miserable experience sittling in middle seat between 3. Iam 6'2'' tall.

Food prefernce was advised well in advance overphone and emirates site. But cabin crew have no knowledge about it.

In dubai was off loaded from aircraft 15minutes prior to boarding at gate. Reason i was not willing to accept another change in my seat without my knowledgee. Duty manager at dubai airport was very rude,un polite and de plane me as i ask for reasons...

Ground duty staff was almost in a verge to manhandle me. Was left on my fate and had no option rather to pay 432 dihrams to validate my sector and get the next emirates depature at 3.15am to HYD.

I was handed complain form and least none were bothered about my complain or me.

Will never fly emirates nor recommend anyone......!!!

:td:Booking Ref:B5NYQN.7th June 2010

I assume you were in J class. It's hardly the end of the world being in a middle seat.

You offloaded yourself at DXB, and then you complain that you had to pay to get on another flight? :confused:

No doubt this would have caused the flight to be delayed, disrupting all the other passengers.

Fair enough, you have a valid complaint that your original seat was changed, but other than that it sounds like acted very badly.

Cheers,
Rick

I would be more sympathetic to OP. I think he was in Y, and thats why he is complaining. You cannot imagine how hard it is if your meal preference is screwed up, especially in 6+ hour sectors. It is very hard on vegetarians, especially for some Hindus and Jains who abhor meat for religious reasons. Vegans from elsewhere could throw tuna or turkey slice away from the sandwich and still be fine with it. Not so for others. This is bit of a cultural issue, and regretebly not understood in its seriousness by people from other cultures.

If a confirmed seat allocation is changed by the airline for any operational reasons (like equipment changes), the passenger must be informed at the gate (not that there is a rule, but rather as a courtesy). I don't want to end up in a middle seat if I have selected an aisle. It may be okay if you are with your family or friends.

Offlate EK has been bit inconsistent. I had exactly the same experience as OP had. My seat allocation was screwed up. I had selected one of those two-somes at the back of a 777. It was the connection flight from DXB which I took after riding 4+ hours at godforsaken hours. While everything was right at the port of boarding, I found that I was on a different seat when my BP was scanned at the agate. I ended up riding 7+ hour sector in the middle row.

Imagine if this happens to you twice in a row like OP experienced. I don't find it strange at all that OP made this an issue at the gate.

EK can be very different (sometimes) if you are from sub-continent. Some swallow it down (like me). Others embrace martyrdom fighting (like OP). To each its own.

My sympathies.

EK staff specifically look for passengers with India/Pak/SL/Bang connections when making seat changes as they know their complaints are rarely taken seriously by the management. I've lost track of the number of times I've had my seat changed because some Caucasian family "wanted to sit together".

They won't mess with a Skywards Silver/Gold passenger however - I haven't had a single seat change (other than op-ups) since I've been elite while it was virtually every second flight before that.

Well said.

Annoying to have a seat change, but when refusing to board, it is nothing more than a voluntary change and not surprising that the passenger had to pay fees to rebook. Given he chose not to board then there is no help that would be expected ( ratther than being left to ones fate )

I wonder if the OP had a bulk head pre-assigned... If so and it was in a Basinet row a pop up window will come up an dsay you may be moved as you are in a Basnet row or along those lines.

Yeah, for some reason I assumed he was in the middle seats of J class. I forgot there were middle seats of 3 in Y on the 777.!

Anyway, I doubt we'll ever hear from the OP again. That's usually the case with these sorts of posts.

Cheers,
Rick

Of course it's annoying to have your pre-selected seat changed, but Emirates' Conditions of Carriage clearly state (so so it is with most - if not all - airlines):

5.4 Seating
We will try to meet advance seating requests, but we cannot guarantee that you will be able to sit in any particular seat. We can change your seat for a similar seat at any time, even after you have boarded the aircraft.

I bet the OP won't post on FT again as well - add this thread to the list of "one post wonders". Seen quite a few of "personal grievance issue" posts and most if not all contain the language "I'll never fly xxx again" "I won't recommend xxx to anyone".

Someone should compile the list and let's see which airline gets the most "I'll never fly again"...

I won't judge either Emirates or the OP with regards to the situation - simply because i don't know any of the details.... but, fact remains that due to episodes like this - the boarding procedure and process for India based flights out of Dubai are all very zooish ..... and really lacks professionalism. It is slow boarding process, multiple queues, irate ground staff etc etc., not fun......

The OP has also posted this complaint on Skytrax as well, obviously pretty cheesed off about it...

wow, i had no idea they did this. are they also allowed to change your seat when you've paid for "premium" exit row for example? never gave a second thought to CoC aside from baggage....

EK don't have a feature which allows you to pay a premium for exit row seating. Or anything in between. They should, but they don't.

EK "elites" (ie Silver and Golds) can't select exit rows online at the time of booking as they are always zeroed out. This has to be done at the airport. And the airport simply allocates them on a first come/first served basis without any regard for status.

If there is well known, institutionalized discrimination against passengers from Indian subcontinent on EK, why do such passengers fly on this airline?

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.

I have a friend who used to work as a flight attended for Emirates and he had some similar horror stories to tell when he did the South Asian routes!

Without wanting to go way OT, there are plenty of articles on the web about Dubai (and other gulf states) and racial discrimination again South Asians/East Asians.