Insane Experience at LAX with Emirates
 

Booked a business class ticket which I upgraded using Skywards miles transferred from Marriott bonvoy to travel from LAX to DXB to VIE (two weeks later) and was scheduled to depart yesterday.

After a long ordeal at the checkin counter, with the station manager confused - I was denied boarding and told to contact customer affairs. I did so in the evening LA time, when their phone lines opened in Dubai and told the agent what happened at checkin. Hours later I received a call which informed me that I have been blacklisted from emirates for “abuse of the skywards program” and that I would not be entitled to a refund. What the literal…

Any Insights? Ever happen to anyone here before? I’m trying to resolve this with emirates, but I’ve flown with them for years and never had these issues

This has been mentioned before (Skywards accounts going into Audit). It's normally after large numbers of points are transferred into a Skywards account from AMEX / Bonvoy etc. However, it's normally new Skywards accounts - so I guess this rules you out.

I guess you'll just have to continue with Emirates to try to get to the bottom of it.

At this point, I’m stuck in LAX and I am still dealing with emirates.

Update: Rebooked with TK and I’m enroute to Abu Dhabi. Emirates says I’m blacklisted from flying on them PERIOD, for “abuse of the skywards program”. I’m trying to find out exactly what that’s supposed to mean, but in the meanwhile - chargeback is my friend and so is the DOT. Never been treated worse by an airline before.

Sounds very weird. I wonder if they've got you confused with somebody else? Not sure how it works where you reside, but in Europe we can "demand" full details of of any data held. So, you may be able to get that data and try to work out what's happened.

I’m a Brit for what it’s worth.

If you booked a ticket with Skywards miles...you'll get the taxes back, but a chargeback wouldn't make you whole, no?

That's correct, but I don't know what I'm dealing with when it comes to Emirates. I'm also fighting Emirates over this, but I'm not sure how it's going to pan out.
I bought a business class ticket and upgraded it with miles.

Strangely nuclear option by EK and on a paid J ticket!

Out of curiosity, how many miles did you transfer from Bonvoy? How many miles have you transferred from all sources in last 12 months?

If it was just for 2-4 segments this one time, can't have been more than 100-200k?

Maybe the fact that you purchased a ticket with cash in the US rather than a redemption is what is suspicious here…

By cash I mean card, I didn’t redeem for the ticket itself.

I transferred in 91,000 Skywards Miles from Bonvoy

Emirates keeps putting me onto their customer affairs department who aren’t really being helpful

that's really not eye-brow raising...

If you are based in AUH you could also turn up at their EKGHQ in Garhoud or at T3 in DXB with the relevant evidence and escalate it that way.