Two weeks ago, I redeemed some Skywards mileage for a return flight DXB-BOM-DXB and flew the outward leg on 01/09/06. On 06/09/06, I realised that I could cut my (business) trip short and contacted the Skywards service centre in Dubai by phone to arrange for my original booking on 12/09/06 to be moved to an earlier date.
To my surprise, the agent told me there were no seats until 12/09, except for one on their 4.30 a.m. flight the very next morning. As I was 5 hours from the nearest airport and it was already 5 p.m., there was no way I could make that flight.
Subsequently, my secretary tried purchase a ticket (so we moved from fliying on a reward ticket to a new purchase), but again was told that all flights until 16/09 were full from all airports such as Bombay, Cochin, Hyderabad, Madras, etc., due to the end of the Onam holiday in Kerala.
Obviously, regular travellers (I am a Skywards gold card holder) are not preferred over once-in-a-blue-moon holiday travellers......
But to my surprise, at 6.00 p.m. on Saturday, 09/09, our travel agent called to inform me there was indeed a seat on EK 543 at 4.30 a.m. from Madras the next morning. So I took a connecting flight to Madras arriving at 11.00 p.m. and checked in for EK 543. At this point, the agent told me he could not credit my Skywards account with miles, as my ticket was Air India and this was a code share flight
, something I had not noticed until mentioned by him.
So, here we have Emirates refusing a loyal customer and Air India can sell empty seats that come up literally 10 hours prior to departure on the same aircraft??? This is total madness.
On a more general note, why do Emirates run code share flights when they can't even accommodate their own customer base??
