After flying almost exclusively Thai/eva from heathrow the last 10 odd years i bowed to spouse pressure this ongoing trip and booked Emirates via Birmingham.
First off we had a 2 hour delay ex birmingham, not saying this cant and dosent happen Thai/Eva ex Heathrow but never happened to me in 20 odd flights , when we finally got in the air i inquired about connecting flights only to be met with inpolite indifference and the cheif stewardess actually said. worst that will happen is you will be without luggage for 3 days.
Priceless.
After landing dubai, and i will add the flight was poor, no offers of drinks except at meals time and meals was mainly crap, some rag head curry or salad or a kick at the pantry door.
Then a quick sprint through Dubai airport to get the last connection of the day, with young child and hand luggage and lo and behold our party of 4 had 4 seperate seats, even my 2 year old daughter had a seat next to women in a burka, with me and her mother 9 rows back.
After take off and rearranging seats i had to fend of the burka women forever touching my young daughter, she kept squeezing her cheeks etc and in the end i threw her off and told her to fuck off, which led to her white robe wearing husband goning balistic and i thought we were going to get nasty untill some Aussie turned up (sky marshal?) and moved me and young un to buiss class which would have been nice, but yet again, all the robe wearing split arses want to do is handle my daughter.
it was a relief to land bangkok, only to find they had lost our pram,. after 2 hours waiting and filling in forms they offered us a replacement, looked like you would catch Ebola just looking at it we turned it down.
Fast forward a few weeks and we are due to fly home and the day b4 my daughter has chicken pox, the doctor at Pattaya international tells us to delay our flight 5 days, ok i start ringing, on a satday, no one at Bangkok wants to know, closed on satday, i get a number for emrgencies, try for 1 hour rings, but no answer, sometimes rings, sometimes engaged, sometimes straight to voicemail fucking shit, i try emirates UK engaged for over 1 hour
This scenorio canot be that unique, if you need to change a flight at the weekend what the fuck can you do?
in the end i rang dubai, service desk at the airport and he changed our flights in 2 minutes flat, thats service, although he charges 75 quid per ticket.
Balls to emirates and stopovers, never again.