By Paige Oldfield & Zesha Saleem
A dream birthday trip to Bali costing £6,000 has been ruined after an 11-hour queue for a connecting flight.
Karen McArthur and her two friends were ready to spend 7 days in the popular holiday destination after departing from Gatwick on April 18. Despite worries about travel disruption due to record rainfall in Dubai, they boarded their flight without any problems.
However, once the group arrived in Dubai, they found out their connecting flight was nowhere to be seen - only to later find out it was cancelled. The trio, hailing from Stockport, were directed back through passport control where they encountered what they described as "absolute chaos".
Karen, a 57-year-old operations manager, alleges that around 1,000 passengers were attempting to re-book their flights with only one Emirates staff member available. She recounts how they queued for an astonishing 11 hours without food or water until they were finally able to secure another flight, and said: "It was very stressful, people were passing out in the queue. We were in that queue for 11 hours, we did it in rotation."
She further described the situation as a free-for-all, with lots of pushing and men arguing amongst themselves. The Army had to be called in to manage the queue. After their flight was rescheduled to 3am the following morning, the group insisted on hotel accommodation. Karen recounts that they managed a mere four hours of sleep before shelling out £60 for a taxi back to the airport.
The Manchester Evening News reported that the ordeal didn't end there - upon arriving in Bali and discovering their luggage hadn't followed, the frustration intensified.
Karen, who relies on anti-epilepsy medication, found herself in a dire situation after depleting her hand luggage supply. She said: "No one knows where their luggage is. Up to now, we have had no communication with Emirates to say where the luggage is or when it will arrive."
Her attempts to resolve the issue hit a wall: "I've had one response to my formal complaint asking to fill out a form, but the website was down and the chatbot is just going around in circles."
The lack of her prescribed medication has had a noticeable effect. She added: "I've run out of medication and they told me I need to go to a doctor. I managed to get information up to show (a local pharmacist) my prescription but they've given me a copy medication, not the true one I take. It's had a strange impact; I've got slurred speech and I'm not fully present at all. This whole situation has been an emotional rollercoaster."
In the meantime, Karen and her companions have incurred additional expenses for new clothing and medication. She said: "This has caused us an immense amount of stress due to the lack of information or any Emirates staff present at Dubai Airport.
"There was no information whatsoever provided by Emirates on the group at Dubai Airport. We were exasperated as all channels of communication to Emirates were just providing polite responses with no useful or tangible information. There was no attempt whatsoever at Dubai to manage the re-booking queue of people trying to re-book flights. We have spent since Saturday trying to source medication and something to wear and be able to swim with."
"Our luggage has still not arrived and we have still had no meaningful contact from Emirates. I have emailed them around six times describing the urgent need for my medications. It is prescribed and I have a sleep doctor as I have chronic insomnia."
She added: "100 per cent. We have seen grown men breaking down in tears with the stress. We have also as a group of friends who travel together regularly been close to ripping each other's heads off. It's been awful. I have had four hours' sleep since Thursday."
An Emirates spokesperson said: “This week has been one of the toughest for Emirates operationally, as record storms hit the United Arab Emirates. I would like to offer our most sincere apologies to every customer who has had their travel plans disrupted during this time.
“On Tuesday 16 April, the UAE experienced its highest rainfall in 75 years. Lashing storm winds and rain disrupted activity across the cities. Our 24/7 hub in Dubai remained open, with flight movements reduced for safety, but flooded roads impeded the ability of our customers, pilots, cabin crew, and airport employees to reach the airport, and also the movement of essential supplies like meals and other flight amenities.
“We diverted dozens of flights to avoid the worst of the weather on Tuesday, and over the next 3 days we had to cancel nearly 400 flights and delay many more, as our hub operations remained challenged by staffing and supply shortages.
“We were clear on our 2 priorities: Look after our customers who have been impacted by the disruption and get our operations back on schedule. To free up resources and capacity to manage impacted customers as a priority, we had to suspend check-in for passengers departing Dubai, implement an embargo on ticket sales, and temporarily halt connecting passenger traffic from points across our network coming into Dubai.
“We deployed additional resources to aid our airport and contact centre teams with rebooking and put on additional flights to destinations where we identified large numbers of displaced customers. We sent over 100 employee volunteers to look after disrupted customers at Dubai Airport departures and in the transit area, prioritising medical cases, the elderly and other vulnerable travellers.
"To date, over 12,000 hotel rooms were secured to accommodate disrupted customers in Dubai, 250,000 meal vouchers have been issued, and more quantities of drinking water, blankets, and other amenities. Behind the scenes, it was all hands-on deck for thousands more employees across the organisation to get our operations back on track.
“As of Saturday 20 April, our regular flight schedules have been restored. Passengers previously stranded in the airport transit area have been rebooked and are en-route to their destinations. We have put together a taskforce to sort, reconcile, and deliver some 30,000 pieces of left-behind baggage to their owners.
“It will take us some more days to clear the backlog of rebooked passengers and bags, and we ask for our customers’ patience and understanding. We know our response has been far from perfect. We acknowledge and understand the frustration of our customers due to the congestion, lack of information, and confusion in the terminals.
We acknowledge that the long queues and wait times have been unacceptable. We take our commitment to our customers very seriously, and we have taken learnings from the last few days to make things right and improve our processes.
“I’d like to also acknowledge and thank our teams across the airline, and our many suppliers and partners for their tireless efforts around the clock this week, despite the challenging conditions, to support customers, recover our network, and bring our operating schedule back to normal.
