I would like to express my greatest dissapointment in the poor service received on my first flight with Emirates.
I had such great expectations after so many people had told me how great flying with Emirates was and how good the service is.
We were on flight 010 travelling from London Gatwick to Dubai, connecting in Dubai on Flight 770 to Cape Town on the 24/12/10.
My husband and I reside in the UK but are from South Africa and Kosovo respectively. My husband has a valid passport and a valid SA vistors visa.
We arrived at Gatwick just after 5.00pm and proceeded to the check-in. The check-in lady was unable to key in the short country code for Kosovo even though you had the country listed in your drop down box when I checked in on-line. The passport was passed over to your flight section and for the next hour the check-in staff and supervisors tried numerous ways of getting the code into the system in order to print out my husband boarding pass. After a hour of trying to do this, they printed out his boarding pass from London to Dubai and took a copy of his passport and visa for South Africa and said to us that the boarding pass for Dubai to Capetown would be waiting at the departure gate. They said the problem was not ours but that your systems could not accommadate the country code for Kosovo.
When we got to the departure gate, there was no onward boarding pass waiting. They then stated that they had faxed a copy of the passport and visa to Dubai and since Dubai had seven hours, it would be no problem and we could collect it from the ticket office in Dubai. I then asked if it would definitely be there as we had a short transfer time of 1hr and 50 minutes. They stated it would be there and that the office in Dubai were aware of the situation.
We touched down in Dubai and cleared security, which left about 50 minutes to catch our connecting flight. We proceeded to the ticket section, had to clear security for a second time and explained the situation. They of course knew nothing about the boarding pass or the situation and said no fax had been received. The ticket office then spent another 30 minutes trying to print off the boarding pass with no sense of urgency that we needed to get this connecting flight. I explained that I had family from all over the world waiting for us in Cape Town. We were asked to wait, I then approached the counter for a second time and queued, at this point we had about ten minutes to get the boarding pass and get across Dubai Airport. Finally after another five minutes they printed the pass and my husband and I proceeded to run across Dubai Airport- clearing security for the third time and arrived at the departure gate. They then took my husband passport and told us we could not yet board the flight yet and that the plane would not leave without us. I was furious at this point, never in all my years of flying had I ever see such a lack of communication between departments of the same company- You would have thought that after all we had been through that the ticket office could have called the departing gate to let them know the situation, so for the third time I had to explain the whole thing again. I also asked them for a complaints form and was passed a customer service form, which I will complete with the same email.
The plane departure time passed and at this point they gentleman at the departure explained that they were now contacting South Africa to verify that my husband could travel to South Africa (even though he had a previous stamped South Africa Vistors Visa in the same passport from 2007).
He also explained that the reason was that Emirates would be fined if he could not get into the country. I explained he had travelled to South Africa twice before this with British Airways and we had none of these problems.
We finally made the flight, which was now delayed for a further 50 minutes due to this matter. I have travelled all over the world and have never felt the descrimation we endured, dealing with your departments both in the UK and Dubai.
I would like to receive a response to this complaint and I will be posting this on every travel advisory site, to see if anyone else has had a similar experience.
We are due to fly back with Emirates on the 12/01/10 and I certainly hope that we do not encounter a similar experience.
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