I have vowed never to fly Emirates again due to a similar experience in Dubai. In fact it was two flights parked a VERY long way from the terminal (the incomeing from MEL and the outgoing to CDG). And the wait in the middle - two hours in a hot, dirty and very crowded terminal. That and the horror of a seven-hour flight with screaming babies that the parents were actually CAUSING (they wanted to be held - the parents wanted them to lie in the bassinet, and kept putting them back in them despite the screaming). I admit this is not the airline's fault, but the FAs were doing sweet FA to help the parents or encourage them to silence their little screamers. By the time we arrived in Europe I was so hysterical from lack of sleep (middle seat on a 777) that if there was any other way to get home from Europe, I would have jumped at it (can't afford QMII, sadly).
To top off that experience on the way back, we were given seats across the aisle from one another for the DXB-MEL leg by the checkin guy at Birmingham and he did not care. he told us to sort it in Dubai. The customer service desk at Dubai is on the other side of security (!) and they told us to speak to the gate agents, who didn't care and told us to try to get teh FAs to fix it. Now I ask you: if I was an Arab wife, would the airline have been happy to separate me from my husband in a plane full of strangers? No. Worse, once we'd managed a seat swap (with an elderly man who snored heavily for the entire flight, so thank god neither of us were next to him in the end) , a mother came down the aisle with the same problem - only this time she was FIFTEEN ROWS away from her THREE YEAR OLD daughter. In what airline's book is that acceptable? Even LCCs would fix that AT CHECKIN.
Never fly Emirates if you want to be treated as something other than cattle.
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