I think a lot of people get far too exercised about initial slot applications. As the slot application process is transparent, the applications have to make sense. In this case it is quite possible that EK, naturally wanting to maximise its slot holding at DXB, just looked for somewhere to proport to add an extra flight simply to increase their DXB holding. I’m not saying that EK will or won’t add an extra NCL, only that you shouldn’t read too much into some slot applications.