Well, just returned from DXB today after two days of madness at the airport.

Good news, today in the morning the situation for pax departing from DXB was not too bad. Almost no cancelations on EK. But quite some on other airlines.

But yes... I do understand that EK had to manage a crisis they never saw before. But their behavior was just not acceptable.

Couple of things:

First: I had booked a flight to CPH. Both the call center and on the ground staff insisted (and I got it in written) that the next option they can offer would be 27th April. Pointing out that there are seats available to OSL tomorrow (today) and there are plenty of connections from OSL to CPH each day, they refused because "Sir, you have a 1 coupon ticket, we cannot add a connection to it" or "we cannot book SAS, they will not confirm our booking". I escalated all the way to the shift manager. Nothing... they were absolut set. Either 27th to CPH or tomorrow (meaning today) to OSL as final destination. I also asked about any other option, e.g. on LH, or via Abu Dhabi. Was all categorial refused. No matter how much I complained and discussed. Also met a couple of other people with the same story.... booked to AMS or CPH being offered only OSL.

I then asked the shift manager to put this down in writing that I will take the flight to OSL against my will and will organize transportation to CPH on my own. As SK*G it was easy to jump on the first flight after arriving to OSL, but I am not sure I get the ticket reimbursed from EK. I doubt it.

Second: While they operationally canceled the flights, they did not cancel them in the booking systems. Of course I tried to get our corporate TA to help out, but they said the coupons are under EK control and do not show as cancelled. So their hands are tied.

Third: All the planes yesterday and today left half empty. Huge machines to major hubs like FRA, LHR, BRU, DUS (had colleagues on those)... On my flight today, MAYBE 30% of the seats were occupied in Economy and even less in J. I guess these were all the pax which booked a connection via DXB which were not allowed to check-in at their point of origin for two days. Of course EK should have known these pax will never arrive in DXB and could have used those seats to move people out of DXB.

And lastly: The meal vouchers were a joke. For waiting 24hrs at the airport I got 1(!) drink and 1(!) snack at Costa. Clocked out at 18AED for me. Embarrassing. They did not at any time provided hotel accommodation or transportation. Of course I will try to claim, but I am pretty sure, I won't see any reimbursement.

I do not mind the delays and that such a situation is just nothing DXB and Emirates were prepared for. But the way they tried to sort out the mess was just not professional and made the situation even worse.

TBH, pretty good chance I will NEVER again book Emirates. And rather go via Abu Dhabi in the future. Never had issues with Ethiad, They were always helpful and tried their best to sort our things which went not that well.

Some valid points here, but I’m sceptical Etihad is the long-term solution. Etihad and AUH escaped this chaos because of geography, not because they are a better airline or hub operationally. They have not been tested in this way.

I’ve been flying EK a long time, over several hundreds of sectors, and this is the first time I’ve been left in the lurch by EK. Many things were / are out of their control, and some things were / are within their control. I hope they learn from this, now that they see what is possible.

Well, at least Ethiad has a pretty big partner network including some respectable well connected airlines like AF/KLM, AC, ANA, etc... which can take care of such things as connections in Europe to the final destinations. Saw enough options last days AUH->AMS/CDG/BRU->CPH.

Sure, they were not hit as hard.... but there were also a lot of cancelations and delays out of AUH last few days. And all my colleagues in the area said, they were accommodated well by Ethiad while us at DXB suffered quite a lot by the bad crisis management.

You said it yourself: they were not hit as hard. Not even close.

I don't have a solid answer for you (not that I was the OP you replied to), however I do notice that when IRROPs happen [not necessarily this particular instance], the culture at EK is very by-the-books, especially at DXB. If computer says no, there's no way to override, nor are agents empowered in customer service to take actions that improve CX vastly, even if the benefits far outweigh the cost. It works extremely well when operations are smooth and I truly believe that's the best way to run it when things work, but given that they don't seem to have a robust process to deal with large-scale IRROPs [as evidenced by their strategy change from "only transit" to "only OD with DXB allowed" once they figured out the bottleneck was ground resources], the rigid adherence comes across as both impersonal and uncaring.

Again, as an armchair general, other airlines during mass impact (e.g., BA's varoius IT meltdowns, or the JL incident earlier this year) open up their partnerships & interline alliances, allowing both flexibility in airline & time. The policy of rebooking 7 days later as the only option offered is not consumer-centric. In last May's BA IT meltdown, I was rebooked on a VS service without hesitation when asked, and at HND, my colleagues were offered a wide array of options on SQ, TG, etc. out of NRT, or extremely lenient & flexible rebooking options.

https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/emirate...loods/76101231

According to the above, EK provided 12,000 hotel rooms, 250,000 meal vouchers and cancelled 400 flights (40% of the approx 1000 in total that were cancelled at DXB).

I would be interested to know if flyDubai handled the crisis any better? Although EK seems to call FZ its sister airline, they are run pretty separately.

EK clearly didn't handle the crisis as well as one would have hoped or expected, however, the airport operator, Dubai Airports, also appears to be very culpable.

Lessons could have been learnt from Typhoon Jebi, when several airports in Osaka prefecture, including KIX, were heavily flooded in circa 2013? Dubai Airports should have had an Airport Emergency Plan (AEP) in place and practised, and should certainly have identified rain as a potential hazard. ICAO even suggests airports include weather related emergencies, including heavy rain, in their AEPs in guidance material - Doc 9137 Part 7 - Airport Emergency Planning.

Whilst passengers may be disappointed in EK's response, from reading the press reports, I would venture Dubai Airports looks equally culpable, if not more so.

1) Why did Dubai Airports not have pumps ready to remove the rainwater?
2) Why did Dubai Airports design its infrastructure with none or insufficient drainage on the ramp, taxiway and runways?
3) Why did Dubai Airports not have a plan for how airport staff, crew and passengers could access DXB in the event of rain?
4) Why does Dubai Airports apparently not have a tannoy in the airport passenger terminals for passenger announcements in the event of an emergency?

You were stuck in DXB transit for 2 days on your way to CPH, the next available flight to CPH was April 27, but they refuse to rebook you DXB-OSL-CPH (with the OSL-CPH leg on another carrier) despite the fact that you were stuck in transit at DXB for 2 days?

Madness.

I can only imagine this is the case throughout. Lots of passengers stuck in transit in DXB who could be moved out of DXB much sooner if only EK was willing to book a domestic/intra-schengen connection for them.

Their inflexibility during times like this is making their own crisis response efforts ineffective.

It's the cause but it's irrelevant to the solution. It wouldn't matter if a plane crashed in DXB and the runways were blocked for days (like JL at HND). The legal obligation is there for pax ex-UK/EU (plus many Balkans) and IL.

EK refuse to rebook pax to other carriers despite the obligation. A pax flying GLA-HKG, why on earth do they need to wait to fly via meltdown hub DXB? Honeymooners ex-WAW going to SEZ are told to come back in a week because they will ONLY rebook to their own metal but I could find seats on other carriers in around 30 seconds. The vast majority of EK pax are transfer anyway. Staff sit there wearing the beautiful get-up and hat but are not empowered to do a single thing.

And never mind the law that is meant to protect those flying from the markets above, it's been the industry standard for decades to rebook pax. EK are even manipulating this, if they send a memo to the checkin staff to not check pax in, the flights are still operating in the PNR (they're not UN) which is a very weird way of doing things as it will no-show and need a waiver.

They don't care about the law, they don't care about rights, and they don't care about pax.

You dont hear it often but EK could learn something from BA, LH etc on bad weather planning, recent bad weather BA offered free flight changes before the event to avoid congestion and people taking risks at the airport. EK didnt want to, it only stopped depatures when it was so bad on the ground its own staff could not get to the airport. It could have allowed passangers to rebook on its partner networks, but it opted not to for reasons unkown. Had it done so earlier, network congestion would have reduced and it would not have needed to pause connections.

In all EK did what it does best, play it risk and hope it does not get burnt. Sadly a cat only have nine lives

well, then a lot more than 12.000 pax needed hotel room. I did not get any and had to book myself. Also I meet quite a lot of pax in the ticket desk queue which had to sleep on the ground in the terminal. Some for days.

and yes, we got meal vouchers… like I said. One drink, one snack. Which was good for a warm drink and a croissant (and some other similar sized items, but selection was very restricted) at Costa. I had to pay for the bottle of water as it was not covered by the voucher.

there were pumps deployed everywhere, but the water had to be transported off on tank transports as there was just no reservoir to pump into. Same in the city… the pump worked to remove water from one side of the road and dumped it to the other where it then flowed back to the start.

even worse… they disabled all the information screens with the flight status. They just pulled up a generic message to call Emirates on some number which most of the time was not reachable.

yepp, and I was not the only one. Heard the same story over and over again.

Just serves as a reminder that all airlines and humans are greedy and shortsighted. Some a bit more than others.

I must have bad luck, I was stuck in Nov/Dec in Munich with the snow storms. I flew Lufthansa and had the exact same issues in terms of comms then with LH and now EK. No airport staff to talk to, call centre and webchat which we were told to call not responding, spent a night sleeping on a train as all local hotels were packed out. No food or drinks offered to pax at the airport other than a pallet of water left at the side of the building with no communication. I understand these things can happen, preparation is key and getting that across to pax is vital. Leaving them in the dark*, directing them to comms channels which they know arent working is adding further fuel to the fire. Definitely an experience I will never forget!

On a similar note, have arrived in HK with EK today minus the luggage and being told it will be with me in the next few days. Long line of passengers who also didn't have their luggage on the flight were told the same. Flight was delayed approx 30 mins out of Glasgow and then the same from DXB-HKG.

* to date im still trying to reclaim the 150 euro per day travel expenses from LH

In my experienced only major US-based airlines are good at handling massive IRROPS.

Partially, because they have experience (snow storms etc at scale) and partially because most US airlines have invested in IT and have actually useful apps and website that offer rebooking options and wavers, so most of the time you do not need to call and have choice of alternative flights online, sometime even including OAL. Agents are also empowered to do exceptions that help in extreme cases.

European airlines also have a lot of experience in massive IRROPS and do reasonably good recovery , but their IT sucks a big time and agents are completely useless, so getting rebooked often takes a lot of effort.

Emirates was hit so bad because they do not have experience, no proper IT support for rebooking and agents are useless - not empowered to rebook OAL or do other exceptions.

In the last few years, it become tremendously better on EU airlines. I am usually traveling LH, OS, LX, LO or SK and cannot complain about sorting out the mess… even during massive weather related issues. Usually I do get an SMS or push notification to the airline app with the alternate option the moment my flight is marked as cancelled.

Guess status might help, but never had any problems on *A for many years. Even during big system wide problems it was easy to learn about my options and get accommodated.

Usually I just ask at the lounge and they sort it out. At DXB the lounge agents were useless.

and I was NEVER pushed into accepting a different city to fly to! Not once! Besides the occasional JFK instead of EWR or SJC instead of SFO, and even then it was presented as an option… never as „take it or leave it“ like EK did now.