I have a simple YYZ-DXB-KHI flexible ticket (return portion) and wanted to make a simple date change. I tried to do this online and got to the last step where it told me it would send me a credit note for the Rs. 1 difference (less than $0.02). Then when I click "ok" it told me there was an error and to contact EK.

Called EK. Told that they cannot revalidate bookingn because my TA is also changing the booking as we speak. (Nonsense. It was 4am local time and I had not spoken with my TA in weeks.) EK changed the dates but told me I need to call TA and tell them to call EK to revalidate. Relayed information to my TA and TA just called me and said that EK said tickets have been changed by me with EK and they refuse to change or revalidate anything.

Now I am stuck with a ticket with the correct booking dates but the ticket is still issued with my old dates. I am considering visiting the EK ticket office but I don't know if this will do anything and parking is bloody expensive.

The TA seems to honestly be confused also but not as confused as I am. He said he needs a copy of my changed ticket from EK. I don't know what to give him, I changed it on the phone and never received any email.

I was in the same boat last week. My parents got a ticket from a TA(just before the global sale ended). They bought Y tickets and my plan was to upgrade them to J (As per EF there was plenty of availablilty except 1 sector)

I was given the ref number by email.Single ref number for both mom and dad. I logged on to the EKwebsite to upgrade them. I couldnt see my mom's ticket but my dad's ticket was fine.

Contacted EK who said that my moms ticket was issued incorrectly(extra letter in her name, which was then corrected by the TA???). They could see her name in the itinerary but no ticket!!!!. No EK agent in UK and even DXB could do anything with the booking i.e change of date/upgrade etc as it was not in the system properly. They said that the TA had to reissue it. Contacted TA who said that they couldnt do it as the sale had ended and the new fares were almost 50% more

I must have made at least 15 phone calls to the TA /EK etc and at least the ticket is now updated on the system. They have given separate ref numbers for my mom and dad. My mom has to travel with a misspelt surname( single letter in the middle). I was told by the TA that they would put a note and that It should be okay.

This whole process took almost a week.!!!!

I can now only upgrade 1 sector instead of 4 as all the rest are gone. I'm keeping my fingers crossed for last minute upgrades.


Moral of the story for me. TA's might be cheaper than EK but if anything goes wrong then its a lot more difficult to sort things out.

Is this a TA or a third-party booking service such as Orbitz, Expedia and the like?

Local TA based in India.My parents decided to go to the local TA(in spite of me telling them loads of times not to do so). There is an Ek office in the city they are based in anyway!!!.


The problem was that I could'nt do the booking for them using my UK credit/debit card as the person booking the itinerary has to travel on the same flight(to prevent credit card fraud) and they are coming to visit me in the UK.

The other option was for me to book on the EK indian website, get a reference number and then my parents have to go to the Ek office and pay by a card/draft/cash(no cheques!!)
They took the easy way out and called the local TA, who came to the house collected the money and issued tickets at the same rate as the EK website.

They could have done the booking online by themselves using their own bank card details, but knowing mom and dad they probably would have booked a ticket to Timbuktu instead of the UK

This is the message that you get when you try to buy a ticket using the EK india website

Important Information: If payment is made online by credit card, the same credit card must be presented at the time of check-in and the credit card holder must be one of the travellers on the itinerary. Failure to present the credit card will mean that all passengers in the booking will be denied boarding. Please note that virtual credit cards should not be used to purchase tickets online.

Emirates strongly recommends that any booking created on the website is immediately followed up with necessary payment / ticketing within allowed time limits and that duplicate / multiple bookings are not unnecessarily created. Emirates is monitoring all bookings and strict action will be taken against any misuse.



Tickets must be picked up at a local Emirates office in India within three days of booking or your booking will be cancelled. See office locations and hours. Fares will be re-calculated and may vary if not paid for at an Emirates office in the country of departure due to ticketing restrictions.

Payment can be made by cash or credit card or demand draft/Pay order in favour of ‘Emirates’. Passport (copy) is mandatory for issuance of tickets. For cash payment of amounts exceeding INR 25,000 you will also need to provide a copy of the PAN card.

FWIW, I've never once had a single request for the credit card when checking in from Mumbai.

A nuisance, but the best thing to do is to schedule and then host a conference call with your parents and the TA and then add EK. Your parents should not say a word unless you specifically ask them to. When people are pointing fingers, the only way to get to the bottom of it is to get everybody -- even virtually -- together.

But did you book the ticket for yourself/were you travelling in the same itinerary???

I never used to bother about it. I have booked tickets for them before using my Uk credit card. However a colleague of mine did the same a few months ago ex DEL. His parents were refused a boarding pass and they frantically called him(middle of the night UK time). He then had to call Ek and then fax an authorisation letter to EK with his credit card details and if I am not mistaken, a copy of his credit card.[/I]. It took an hour or two and his parents were absolutely shattered. It was quite stressful for him and his parents.

Usually yes, but just 3 weeks ago I traveled on an itinerary booked on my dad's credit card (I wanted it to be billed in INR rather than dollars). Not a question asked.

But then again I had to deal with an India based TA and EK. My parents had paid for the ticket by a cheque and I did consider stopping payment on the cheque at some point.(it usually takes longer than 24 hours to clear a cheque in India).THis is probaly why Ek India does not accept cheque payments.

I did take a legal opinion(from a good friend who is an lawyer) on whether I could take the TA to court( something akin to a small claims court in the UK) for breach of service.The legal opinion was that I could'nt!!!. the TA had booked the ticket as per instructions

Though the surname was spelt correctly in the booking instructions given by my parents,the TA made an error in my moms case . This was then corrected by the TA in the itinerary but not the ticket. This causes an issue with EK contact centres and the entire emirates system(I wonder if they use different systems)

AFAIK the correction by the TA makes the ticket okay for travel(which to their credit they did ASAP as soon as I raised the issue) but made any changes in the booking by EK impossible.

The legal opinion was that the TA can only be held responsible for making sure that the person was able to get the service that they were paid to do(i.e they would'nt be responsible for my inability to change the booking class etc. for a week or so) as per the original itinerary booked.

The issue was finally resolved by the TA and EK by changing the amendment of my mothers booking(i.e going back to the wrong spelling of my mothers surname and then separating my moms and dads tickets). They have then agreed to put a note in my moms booking to ensure that everyone is aware of my mothers mis-spelt surname.

I will happily do the same( though i am not as much of a frequent flier as you) considering the current GBP INR exchange rate, but I would'nt risk letting my parents go through a lot of stress for something so trivial.

Update, went to the Emirates office [semi-rant below]

I explain the situation and the agent said the same thing "your ticket was changed at XXX EST on January 7th with your TA." I pointed out that that time was the middle of the night in Karachi where my TA is and that the agent simply did not change the ticket. He didn't. She then argued with me and told me she did. I said on Jan 7th the only person I communicated with was Emirates.

After almost 15 minutes of going in circles, she decided to check again and she's like oh wait this ticket has been refunded online on Jan 7th not by a TA.



Yes, you, sir, YOU (direct quote) refunded the ticket online.

By this point I was livid. She had the audacity to say that this is not Emirates problem but rather my problem because I didn't check carefully enough and pressed cancel instead of change.

I then showed them the copy of the email from EK which said "your ticket change was not succesful please contact the Emirates office" at which point she said there's simply nothing I can do.

I then asked where my supposed "refund" was and was told to contact the TA even though I "refunded" it online. Finally she said she would contact DXB as they deal with online change issues and now I have to call back tomorrow.


I am NOT happy.

Like I said earlier, its better to deal with one devil(aka emirates) instead of two( aka emirates and TA). I have aged at least 5 years in the last 1 week, honest!!!

But in this case, it is completely EK's fault and, in fact, the TA was not really involved at all. I have changed TA issued tickets with EK multiple times and in this case, IMHO at least, it was clearly the online booking system malfunctioning which could have also happened with an EK issued ticket.

It's a known deficiency in Mercator systems - they don't have their own pricing engine but outsource that functionality to Worldspan's engine. This was allegedly the reason that they didn't institute online changes for so many years, but for whatever reason they have decided to do so now. Guess that API link wasn't as robust as they thought it was after all...