Emirates Airlines (Comments about Emirates Airlines)

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Elena Sleboda <elena.sleboda@gmail.com>
Date: Wed, Mar 21, 2012 at 11:53 PM
Subject: Comment about Emirates Airlines: Refused boarding
To: jawad@alumni.washington.edu

Dear Jawad,

Here's my most recent experience with Emirates airline.

First I was forced to buy a return ticket from Emirates by the Dubai
Visa Centre to apply for the visa, and it was non-refundable.

On the way back from Dubai I came to the airport 2.5 hours before the
flight. They asked me and 16 other people to wait till 1 hour before
the flight, but closed the flight 1.15 mins before the departure as
they oversold the flight due to the 10% overbooking policy practiced
by Emirates. They offered a compensation - 9 hours at an airport hotel
+ a free return ticket to Dubai in the future, but I consider it
inadequate provided that they ruined 2 days of my life (I arrived home
at 2am on a working day, instead of 5pm the day before) and offered me
something I don't need, and vastly inferior to the European practice
as when alternative connecting flights or a monetary compensation are
offered as per the EU Regulation 261/2004. They refused to give me ANY
contact at the customer service I could talk to about the situation.

I didn't get any upgrade, moreover, the seats we got had a broken
entertainment system, flight attendants were ignoring our overhead
signals for 30 mins 2 times in a row when we were trying to find out
whether it'd ever work.

And today they threatened me with an action from their legal
department for posting about this situation on online review boards
('any correspondence released into the public domain concerning
Emirates' as they put it).

Net net, one of the worst experiences with an airline in my life, and
continues to be so.

Many thanks for helping to make people aware of the practices of the airline.

Elena