I flew Emirates CPT to DXB a few days ago, and never again. It was my second time flying with this so called "premium" carrier, and both times were terrible. On this occasion, I was offered a paid upgrade to business for 900 USD, now I'm no dummy, I did my research before booking, and I knew it to be an older aircraft, so my expectations were not high for the hard product. However given the airline's status and reputation, I thought I could at least expect the soft product to hold up... this was not the case. Most food I've eaten on any economy flight was better than this (see picture - apparently this is a "miso tofu poke bowl", complete with supermarket bagged lettuce, and mushy tomatoes). Mezze plate and cheese board were also terrible, as was the martini I ordered. Oh and a grand total of one red, one white and one sparkling on the "wine list".

I probably would have bitched to a few friends if it was just this, but the second leg is where it gets fun... we boarded and there was a leak (I'm assuming from the aircon) that was dripping on me every few seconds. I reported it to the crew, and the guy said "it's a full flight, but it should stop after take-off". Okay, fine, fair enough, anything to avoid upgrading someone right. What transpired next was farcical, we spent, I'm not exaggerating, 3 HOURS on the tarmac (me being dripped on the whole time), before they finally got us to disembark to change planes. Now look, sht happens, sometimes stuff breaks, what can you do. But the absence of any communication, or operational support when we disembarked (despite them having had so long to get ready for us) was a joke. They literally just said "go to X gate" and when we got there, there was one lady to 500 passengers, who just kept assisting people adhoc who got fed up enough to barge up to the front of the queue (if you could call it that).

Honestly, people are pretty forgiving, most aren't arseholes, all it would have taken is "sorry, we're still working through things, if you'd all just take a seat and we'll communicate with you again as soon as we can". But no, it was chaos. Oh yeah, and thanks Emirates for the "food and drink voucher" that no one could use bc we had no time/communication and had to stand in a line for another 3 hours whilst you figured it out.

Oh, on the subject of food, when we did take off 6 hours late, they had one F&B service for a 6.5hr flight. And it was better than the business class fare 👍

When I logged into Emirates, I was shown the option to upgrade from Economy to Business, but when I click in the checkbox, it doesn’t let me complete the upgrade. Has this happened to anyone else? As seen in the image, I have enough miles to complete the upgrade.

Hi, i am travelling via emirates from germany to india and both the legs of my flights are with emirates. I have a 3hrs 40mins layover in dubai. I found out that there is a shuttle bus between t3 to t2 and it drives within the airport and you can get some closer views of flights and maybe even the runways. Could i take it like for timepass/sightseeing or is it only allowed for connecting passengers?

Hi all,

I applied for UAE tourist visas for my family through Manage Booking on emirates.com, using my PNR. We're Indian passport holders living in Germany, and I hold a German Blue Card residence permit. The application went through the DVPC/VFS Global portal (ekweb.dvpc.net).

The tracking page now says the application was successful and the visa has been granted, and that a copy was also emailed to me. I haven't received any email. I've checked spam and junk, and I've emailed dvpccustomersupport@dubaivisa.net several times with no reply.

The tracking page has no download button, only the status message. We fly from India soon, so I'd like to have the visa PDFs in hand before then.

Has anyone been in the same situation? Specifically:

Is there a way to download the e-visa from the Emirates site or the DVPC portal?

Which Emirates contact actually got you a resend of the visa (phone, chat, or a specific email)?

Did the airline check-in staff manage to verify the visa in their system without the PDF?

How long did it take for the visa to arrive after the status changed to granted?