I felt exactly the same way until I used the shower for the first time - you should give it a go next time you find yourself in F on the A380!

Sorry - no can do!

But I did give you fair warning. The words "travel journalist" should have been enough to scare you off.

I thought it was worth a laugh, though :D

That's not a typical price for AMS-DXB.

(Besides - everyone knows the cheapest way to get from AMS to DXB is via Alitalia and/or Etihad - typically comes in around €380 in their frequent offers)

http://i60.tinypic.com/1z497yu.jpg

I would take issue with your comparison of AMS-USA connections. These are not routes on which Emirates wishes to compete. I'm in fact somewhat surprised that they even have filed fares for such routes.

I thought the only reading of Hugo1975 post (168) that makes reasonable sense when referring to the fares listed and mention of "direct flights in economy class" was the price for non-stop to those destinations from their respective hubs (e.g. comparing the price of AMS-NYC r.t. on KL and DXB-NYC r.t. on EK in Y).

Of course, my position is still (170) that I think that we shouldn't look at headline fare prices, given the serious differences between each route pair, not least of which is the obvious: geographical distance!

I might just do that. :D

Perhaps that is what he intended...

However, is it reasonable to compare apples with oranges?

Not even the price of AMS-DXB will bear much relation to the price of DXB-AMS offered by the same carrier. So it's even more meaningless to compare AMS-XXX against DXB-XXX.

+1

Absolute gain of time on a night flight or ULH.
You can change from comfortable clothes into a suit, be clean and shaved, and ready to go directly at the office kick some .... :D:D

I admit everybody doesn't need to shower, but, after all, luxury is by nature something that you don't need.
The absolute luxury is having something (very expensive) that you don't need, and actually not using it.
(if you throw rocks, please don't aim my head)

I somehow do understand why some people like OMGImInPattaya or gbcflyer judge very harshly EK F product, although I won't go as far as comparing EK F with other J.
(and I wonder if gbcflyer ever flew EK F)

The hard product is totally outdated, and out of fashion (if it was ever "in"). It was a game changer when it was introduced (in 2003 iirc), but now, others are doing better.
EK is quite lucid about this, as they should introduce a revamped F soon. (I'll keep on EK at least until I see that )

Staff is clearly the weakest point. Some few times, I had a wow feeling in front of very competent personnel with true sense of client, both onboard and on the ground.
Some few times, I got really irritated by employees sticking stupidly to the book. Two recent examples :
> at checkin, a young lady asks me for a hotel reservation proof, as it is required by my destination. I don't have it because a welcoming party is facilitating my entry. She went see the manager who also got embarrassed although 18 visas of that country are glued in my passport (18!!!). They stood by the rules. Fine. But seriously ...
> on board, a young male FA forced me to choose one dessert, while they usually allow to choose many, even many main dishes depending on availability. I generally don't do that, but, that time, I was very very hungry.
(I do accept all criticism concerning these two first-world problems :) )


Is FCL training short ? Probably.
Do they sometimes lack FCL FA and replace them by whoever is available ? Most probably.

Does it spoil FCL experience ? Yes.
I can balance my judgment as I'm flying EK a lot. But if a first time flyer draws the short straw, he never comes back.



BTW, don't sit in 4K on A388. Two times in a row, AC condensation dropped on my shirt at landing phase. FA just said : "oh, that's just AC condensation ; it happens from time to time" ! :td::td::td: ... wow, I'm relieved, I thought if was rain leak ...
Definitely not FCL style follow-up.

What my post indicates is that Emirates - on a random chosen date - charges on average 50-100% extra per mile (if you would convert the prices into €/miles) for a direct flight ex-DXB compared to a European carrier from its hub (such as KLM ex-AMS). They probably have some kind of agreement with Etihad and Qatar Airways who charge similar absurd rates, which leaves us here with limited options to get a price that we were used to back home.....

Yes it is often more expensive for flights originating in Dubai than for transit flights. I often see fares from Bangkok to Europe on EK are similar in price to flights whose destination is DXB.

Maybe back in the old regulated days - when governments set the fares between city pairs - the "price per mile" was a guide to airline pricing. But it's not any more. Every airline will charge the most they can for every seat on sale. It doesn't really matter how much longer the distance is from the US to DXB is than the distance to AMS - so long as the correct plane is chosen and enough fuel is onboard! - these are two very, very different markets and they will be charged in completely different ways. There are FAR more options to get to the US from AMS than there are from DXB, for instance, and far more airlines offering fares on such routes from AMS. However, if there were as few airlines plying for business from AMS to the States as there are from DXB, you can be sure that the airlines left would raise their prices to the maximum the market would bear under the new circumstances.

As for EK, QR and EY - just imagine how much more they would charge you if they weren't being subsidised to the tune of $42 billion! (:rolleyes:)

If you can get a better deal on the US carriers, then fly with them instead. They even have peanuts and refreshing towelettes.

That's pretty much standard everywhere. A direct flight can command a premium - and indirect flights offer a discount. Otherwise, why would anyone choose to fly an indirect routing when you can get to your destination more quickly on the direct flight for the same price?

Because I apparently have lots of time on my hands today, I put the fares you posted and the route pair distances through a spreadsheet, as well added BA for an additional comparison. To fast forward to the conclusion, EK does on average charge more for its O&D flights ex-DXB, but we need to be careful about exactly what conclusions we can draw from that.

Compared to KL, EK is charging from its hub to those destinations, on a cost per mile basis, between -5 and 149% more than KL. The -5% is to JFK, 149% to CAI. However, the range is filled rather non-uniformly: you've got 9 and 20% to IAH and DME respectively, then it shoots up to 44% and 67% for SIN and NRT etc.

In fact I'll put it in a table, where the first data point is EK's differential with respect to KL and the second to BA:
SIN: +67%,+24%
NRT: +44%, +13%
JFK: -5.3%, +30%
GIG:+82%, +73%
IAH: +9.6%, -4.4%
DME: +23%, +16%
CAI: +149%, +54%

So yes - it looks like that EK charges more out of its hub than other carriers, but there seems to be no correlation further than that with respect to destinations, which implies that each route pair is evaluated on a separate basis for pricing. The real explanation again is that there is an evaluation about the capacity of a market to pay a certain fare (in other words, the pricing is proportional to the money supply - economists feel free to bash my misuse of the term, sorry!), rather than have any basis in costs and profit requirement - and prices are set accordingly. Also route pairs are not evaluated symmetrically, hence e.g. USA-DXB costs a lot more than DXB-USA.

This is, of course, what we expect given what we know about EK and its captive hub market and business model - it needs some high margin customers somewhere to stay afloat (as and where better than from its hub where there are few non-stop competitors to its extremely wide route network) given the fact most of its passengers are transiting.

So, EK is expensive out of its hub. That is all we can conclude. It doesn't inform our opinion about being "over rated" - because over rated implies we are comparing something with the image of itself it projects (e.g. through marketing). What the pricing analysis can do it only inform our opinions about value-for-money, which I would argue is a different thing to being overrated.

I'd certainly agree there might be value-for-money issues for DXB captives, but that is exactly what you would expect in a quasi-monopoly situation when the product is a choice of non-stop, one-stop or two-stop travel inventory.

As to EK being overrated - I certainly agree with ioto1902 and his post: if you fly a lot, you get to see the average consistency of the product. If you only fly it once or twice, and you've been bombarded with marketing and trip reports, you had better be lucky you them on a good day!

Hard product is hard product and should be exactly what one expects, given all the exposure and reports you can read!

If the above was for NYC, then if you check KLM's price for DXB-NYC on those dates, the cheapest option comes back at AED3875, so approximately €928.

I wouldn't bother with the €25 saving given there are 4-hour layovers at AMS in each direction!

That makes sense. Maybe a better example is BKK to DXB and BKK to Europe...often the fares are pretty much the same...so it's almost like getting one flight free. That's just my take on it.