I fully sympathise with the passengers, but if there is nothing that can be done quickly then they also need to understand that. I sympathise more with the staff in the firing line though as it seems so many, even those in the industry are so quick to brand them as useless, hiding information or being deliberately difficult.
Oh dear, how depressing, I detect the authentic voice of today's industry; the words
"they need to understand that" say it all.
Trust me, Edi Local, they do understand that. What they don't understand is how, with something like 8 hours notice that there would be a need to deal with the connecting passengers, Emirates spent about 8 hours doing precisely nothing to prepare for the arrival in DXB of 60 or so delayed passengers on the ex MAN flight, as well as, of course, delayed passengers on other flights as well. All the hotel, transfer and onward flight arrangements that were made eventually about 6 hours after their arrival could and should have been made before they landed. No-one on this thread mentioned "useless", "hiding information" or "deliberately difficult", as far as I know. It is a corporate failure on the part of Emirates (in this case) to foresee that such problems will occur, to have a well-developed plan to deal with it, and to train their staff to do it, not just a minor lapse by some staff.
It is blindingly obvious that this corporate failure results from a corporate lack of will.
The complete lack of any meaningful communication between ground staff and this group of 60 passengers is a symptom of the same corporate failure to make staff understand that in such circumstances the priority is to tell people what's happening, what you are doing, when things will happen, etc etc. If you have no information to pass on, then passengers must be told that.
Because corporate failure in one area of an airline usually extends to corporate failure in other areas where operational safety can be compromised, I have for many years maintained a position that there are no circumstances whatsoever in which I would buy a ticket on Emirates, and I think I'll stick to that.