[sherrikimes]

We booked a trip on Emirates last October and were excited about flying on an airline with such a good reputation. We headed from LA to Dubai, to Mauritius and back to Dubai, then Singapore and are supposed to head back to LA in May.

We were in business class, so expected good service and comfortable seats. Unfortunately, we didn't receive either. For example, I had to ask multiple times to get water, and finally had to go back to the galley to retrieve it. One time I had even passed my water bottle to one of the flight attendants (think it took 3 times of hitting the pager to get anyone). A good half hour went by and still no bottle. I went back to see what was going on, and the bottle was just sitting in the galley (opened and unfilled) as the flight attendants chatted away about something. When I asked to get the bottle filled, the person said sure, then proceeded to take something about the size of tweezers to slowly retrieve one piece of ice at a time. Needless to say, it took awhile!! There were other service glitches as well (as in forgetting to bring me a meal etc.). I remember thinking that the service was even worse than American Airlines (and that's going VERY low).

The seats were very uncomfortable and difficult to access. We fly on Singapore Airlines on a regular basis and even though Emirates is often touted as being on the same level as Singapore Airlines, I don't think they have much to worry about. The seats have 'mini-bars' which take up quite a bit of space. As a result, the seats are fairly narrow. And the mini-bar contains a bottle of still water (probably a good idea since they are very poor at bringing water to their passengers!), a bottle of sparkling water, a soft drink and maybe a juice. That's it--not a good use of space!

OK, the service was bad and the plane was uncomfortable, but things have gotten even worse.

Our flight back to LA was scheduled to leave Singapore at around 10:15 am have about a 1.5 hour layover in Dubai and then get back to LAX at about 8 pm on the same day. Yesterday I received an email telling me that the flights were changed due to 'operational' issues and that we would now be leaving at 10:15 am or so, but then have a 19 hour layover in Dubai before getting to LA at around 1:30 pm the next day (and yes, there's a 12 hour time difference between Dubai and LA). Really??????

I complained and asked for a refund. They told me that I couldn't get one since I had already started my itinerary. I pointed out that I would have never booked with them had I known the horrible schedule (a total of 42 hours!!!)--nothing. I don't understand how they can make such changes at will and all we're supposed to do is deal with it.