Emirates Airlines (Comments about Emirates Airlines)

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Customer Affairs NY <CustomerAffairsNY@emirates.com>
Date: Nov 1, 2006 11:51 PM
Subject: FW: Emirates Complain-MR. ARIF KHAN-NYC/X/VS/021006/322362
To: Arif@mit.edu, arifkhan21@hotmail.com
Cc: Frances Barton - MRM <fran.bart@emirates.com>,
jawad@alumni.washington.edu, juliafinney@aol.com,
feedback@travelbirmingham.co.uk, scott@emperors.uk.com

1st November 2006,

Dear Mr. Khan,

Kindly see our reply to your recent email, sent as an attachment. Regards.

Violet Simpson
Customer Affairs Officer

Emirates Customer Affairs & Service Audit US/NA
55 East 59th Street, 5th Floor
New York, NY 10022

212-758 3944 -Ext 290-voicemail
212-758-4434-facsimile

1-800-777- 3999 -Reservations-US/NA
1-800-366-6845-Emirates Cargo-US/NA
**************************************************************
01 November 2006

Ref:NYC/X/VS/021006/322362

Mr. Arif Khan

MIT

565 Memorial Drive

Cambridge, MA 02139

Dear Mr. Khan,

This will respond to your most recent e-mails concerning your request
for a refund of your ground transportation expenses and additional
airfare, paid to Aero Asia, on 15 September. We, at Emirates, regret
the fact that you disagree with our determination. Subsequent to a
review of the file and your Reservation Record Locator, PNR, we must
reiterate our position, and deny reimbursing those expenses.

Your PNR indicates, and you admit, Mr Khan, that you and your party,
for some inexplicable reason missed your 12 August Emirates flight
614, Dubai to Islamabad.

Your history, further, indicates that on 13 August, you rebooked
flight 614 for 15 August, and reinstated your return itinerary for 15
September; however, you also missed flight 614 on 15 August.

Once a passenger misses a scheduled and confirmed flight, Mr Khan, the
balance of the passenger's itinerary is auto-cancelled, and must be
reinstated. By missing your flight 614 on 15 August, you and your
party were declared "No Shows"; as a result, your 15 September flight
613 and 16 September flight 203 reservations no longer existed.

The reason you were not charged the "$200 change fee" was due to the
fact that you did not have a reservation to change. In addition, the
airline did not change your reservation, without your permission as
you no longer had a reservation due to the "missed" flights 614 on 12
and 15 August, respectively.

Your request for stand-by status, for a party of three, was subject to
availability, and was not guaranteed. As all of our flights from
Islamabad to Dubai were closed, our staff re-routed you through
Karachi. Regrettably, Mr Khan, that re-routing entailed additional
expense.

Inasmuch as Emirates did NOT cause you and your party to miss your
flights 614 on 12 and 15 August, respectively, canceling your return
reservations, Emirates will not assume responsibility for the
additional expenses that you incurred.

We realize, Mr Khan, that this does not resolve this matter to your
satisfaction, however, we hope that you have a better understanding
what precipitated the events leading up to your cancellation and
ensuing complaint.

As you are aware, we have made arrangements to credit your and Mrs.
Khan, each, with 5,000 complimentary miles towards Skywards member
numbers EK142176823 and EK115312164.

We thank you, again, for making Emirates your international airline of
choice and for allowing us to, once again, comment regarding this
matter.

Sincerely,

Violet Simpson,

Customer Affairs and Service Audit - US/NA

Emirates

55 East 59th Street, 5th Floor

New York, New York 10022

212-758-3944 Ext 290 (voicemail)

212-758-4434-facsimile

# posted by Jawad @ 8:06 AM

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Arif Khan <arifkhan@mit.edu>
Date: Nov 1, 2006 10:26 PM
Subject: A Troubling Experience with Emirates airlines - exasperated
by Emirates Customer Service NY.
Attention:

àCUSTOMER AFFAIRS NY

àOMAR GHALEB

àRICHARD NG

My family and I recently flew with Emirates from JFK to Pakistan via
Dubai. The flight experience was good until we started boarding on
return flight to Dubai. This bad experience was exasperated by the
horrible customer service from the Emirates NY office
(customeraffairsny@emirates.com), when I complained about it.

Irony is, dealing with the Emirates NY customer service office was
worse experience than underlining problem itself. I will try to be as
brief about both of the problems, as I can.

1) A horrible Customer Service Experience:

Once I reached US, I contacted the Emirates NY customer service and
chronicled the entire episode for them. The customer service is very
hard to get a hold off, They usually don't pickup the phone and hardly
return a phone message. After numerous attempts, I was finally told to
talk to Michael Calegio (might be misspelled) to address the issue.
Initially I used to get busy signal every time I dialed his extension.
After few days I was able to get to his answering machine. I left him
three messages over the course of one week, but her never returned my
call. I wrote 4 e-mails in the last 3 weeks, after the initial
complaint, and never received any response to them. I had a heck of a
time finding out any other contact info beside extension 250 and 251,
for NY reservation office of Emirates. The initial customer service
Rep, Carolyn Forneas, also exasperated the problem by promising to
call back by Friday and never following up with it. I left her 3-4
messages also in the last 2 weeks, but didn't hear back from her.

2) Initial Problem: My confirmed return flight from Islamabad to Dubai
to JFK was cancelled with a pretext that I had changed my previous
flight from Dubai to ISB.

My Arguments: For any change in my itinerary, I was supposed to pay
Approx $150 change fee. It also means that if I don't pay fee, the
airline WILL NOT cancel my reservation.

It is a two way contract, one baring me from a change with out penalty
and other baring the airline from cancelling without extraordinary
circumstances (emergency).

I never requested change in my itinerary from ISB to Dubai, on the
contrary, I specifically requested NOT to change anything in my return
flight. What happened to Emirates side of the implied contract arising
from change penalty?

Secondly, I had provided Emirates my contact numbers, why was I never
contact before cancelling my flight.

Consequences for me: After realizing at the airport that all of our
three seats were cancelled, I contacted the Emirates airline customer
service person in ISB airport. He said that he can not put me back on
the flight, since it is full. I did not want to wait for two more days
for the next Emirates flight from ISB due to my work commitment here,
in the US.

I was informed that another Emirates flight is leaving from Karachi
in 10 hours. I requested to be flown to Karachi so I can catch the
flight. My request was declined. Ultimately, I bought tickets myself
from ISB to Karachi to catch the Emirates Flight. I went through the
headache of being stuck in ISB airport for almost 7 hours with two
little children. It was a nightmare. I am not requesting any thing for
the pain and suffering, All I want is to be reimbursed for the tickets
from ISB to Karachi, since Emirates wrongly cancelled my flight.

Arif Khan

617-253-6303

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
________________________________

# posted by Jawad @ 8:05 AM