Is this a reasonable refund?
 

I booked my parents as follows:

GLA-DXB-AKL
PER-DXB-GLA

This was in first class. The airfare was £6k per person.

EK then advised that the GLA-DXB outbound portion would be in Business Class as the aircraft allocated to the route has changed and didn't have First Class, and that a refund would be calculated.

They have calculated a refund of £329, which I find derisory.

I know that airfares are a minefield but is it worth challenging this? There's no way that is the difference between J and F.

I may well be wrong but what has likely happened is that the F fare was a saver and being put into J class, EK have changed to. J flex plus where usually there isn't much difference in fare. Can you not phone up to get them on a service with F for that section and still be able to connect in DXB to AKL?They are usually accommodating in that respect.

S

I got £50 for phukhet to Dxb so £329 is generous.

They are well shady on this and quite frankly outrageous- best to move to a flight where there is F if possible or cancel and book an alternative carrier.

Surely you must have made that up in Dom consumption by now? :D:D

S

It does seem very low, however I had made this point in another thread previously and will make it here again:

You booked GLA-DXB-AKL-DXB-GLA with a total distance travelled of approx 25,000nm (24,914nm according to gcmap.com).

You have been downgraded on the GLA-DXB segment, which constitutes 3,633nm, thus 14.6% of your overall trip.

Even if they gave you this segment for completely free, you'd be entitled to 14.6% of your fare as a refund, which is 875GBP. You are, though, still travelling in J, so you could consider that your cost for that sector is approx. 550GBP.

Another thing to keep in mind is that the departure tax in the UK does not change between J and F, the refund would be due to change in base fare and carrier-imposed surcharges.

If you look at the above numbers, you're paying about 63% of the F price for J, (i.e. you're being refunded 38% of your fare paid for that portion of the journey (329GBP/875GBP, 875GBP being 14% of 6k GBP, 14% being the pro-rata distance of GLA-DXB within your overall routing).

It's frustrating, because the gut feel is that it should be more, in fact I was about to agree with Saltire74 about the Flex Plus recalc, but looking at these numbers I think EK isn't being totally unreasonable, though certainly not generous.

Said it a few times on FT. Airline ticketing is part of the dark arts. Done a dummy booking for the route above with dates in May/June and maybe because I used multi destination, the prices for outbound in J flex plus (and only showing) F flex showed a difference in just over £650 for the full outbound sectors (GLA-DXB-AKL). So to take into account that taxes are the same for J & F from the UK it may well be that the first sector has been re-fared into J flex plus and there has been some fare difference/ carrier charges refunded.

Some of our FT fare gurus will probably be able to give a more definitive answer.

S

In the circumstances, the best next alternative is probably a re-routing to a destination with a First Class cabin.

I'd much rather suffer a slight inconvenience of flying to/from a different airport than let them get away providing so much less for so little refund.

However, others may have different priorities :)

@ sealink

I had the same case and went in court (in France) against Emirates and I won !

I made a thread (here on FLYERTALK), about the downgrading and unfair refund proposal of Emirates, some days ago.

The whole " story " (including French court decision) is here (in French and English) :

http://emirates.over-blog.com/2017/0...-emirates.html

Good evening and good luck !

Oh wow! Amazing! Thanks

interesting, thank you very much for sharing

It would seem a bit low

Of the GBP6000 Approx GBP967 is taxes and surcharges , which leaves GBP5033.

Assuming that it is a simple r/t ticket the 2 fare components are fairly similar, that would make the journey GBP2516 each way


The distance GLA-DXB is 3633 mi. whilst the whole journey is 12,457, so GLA-DXB is approx 29% of the distance. 29% of GBP2516 is GBP729 . Under EC261, there is an entitlement to 75% refund for that sector which would come to GBP547.23

I would be pushing for GBP547 or require that it provide the pricing breakdown to show how 75% of the GLA-DXB sector value is only GBP329 . if it will not provide the proof, I would take it to MCOL to claim the GBP547

I would also suspect that the AKL fare component is slightly higher than the PER component

IIRC, eu261 only kicks in if the downgrade is within a month. They calculate highest J vs lowest F pro-rated... once they downgraded me, the lowest F was cheaper than the highest J, generously I did not have to pay more :rolleyes:

No it doesn't. There is no time component under EC261

With cancellations, there is no compensation is > 14 days notice is given, but that does not apply to downgrades

I always find it outrageous how cheap arlines try to fob people off when they would never offer an upgrade for such a price.

Thanks for the advice folks. I do think EK is being a bit mean...