Emirates Service Recovery – An Oxymoron?

We have all had a trip or two where something has gone wrong, making for an unhappy memory. For some travellers, that trip can turn into a nightmare, especially when things continue to go wrong at your expense.

Just wondering if you can assist with the best way to proceed with a claim from Emirates on an overseas holiday. Travelled with 18 month old baby, 3 adults and just arrived home. 1) Checked in a pram at Adelaide airport which never arrived in Dubai. Filled out appropriate paper work at Dubai and they gave me a broken umbrella stroller with no sun cover on it. Arrived back in Adelaide and was told that the file had been closed ( I still don’t have the pram!) 2) Apart from the lost pram, Emirates staff also threw out a baby blanket that was a gift for my child’s christening (after a passenger vomited on it making it a biohazard). 3) Arrived back in Adelaide and to top off a wonderful experience!! we find that the pop up handle on our Samsonite luggage is bent, broken and the metal has been completely serrated.

Luckily our traveller did have insurance. However they don’t think it’s fair for the insurance company to be making up for the inaction on behalf of the airline. Despite repeated attempts to get the airline to make good on their promises, it seems pleas have fallen on deaf ears. As a result, news of this poor response from Emirates got some of our members reconsidering whom they might travel with in future.

Just awful. I feel for your whole travelling party. This is not a minor complaint, it is an exceptional circumstance of significant inconvenience for the whole trip. Emirates need to learn from this, do better in future and compensate this pax. Any less should be good cause to add Emirates to the list of airlines not to trust with your major travel plans (eg. family holiday) where snafus like this can really drag such a trip down. I would be unhappy if this happened to me on a business trip, but livid if it happened to my family on holiday (which is, for me, a rare and precious luxury not to be risked on an airline that cannot get these things right, of fix things quickly when they go wrong).

In terms of further action or next steps, sadly in Australia our traveller has limited options. Normally there is an industry advocate or ombudsman that can help with dispute resolution. For domestic travellers, the Airline Advocate was recently formed to provide this service. However they can only assist with matters involving member airlines, which at this stage are Australian airlines only. It seems that just leaves legal action via a small claims court or a consumer affairs complaint as the possible next step to escalate the issues.

Have you had similar poor service from an overseas airline responding to your complaints, what steps to resolving the issues worked for you?

Why not share your experience HERE.

Staff Writers