Emirates - robbing b'strds

[Ahoy]

6kg over as I was taking a wing out for a mate - £179 excess charge Then the smart *rse at the payment desk suggests I might as well upgrade to business class to get 10kg more allowance - a snip at £750...
So I emailed them and got the following:

Thank you for your feedback concerning Emirates policy on Scuba diving equipment.

Please be advised that Emirates standard checked baggage allowance (apart from flights to and from North and South America) is 20 kilos in Economy class, 30 kilos in Business class and 40 kilos in First class.

We also have numerous different promotional offers world-wide where an additional allowances may be given on a particular route or for a particular item. One example of this was an additional 10 kilo allowance for Scuba Diving equipment which had been in place for some time.

Emirates continuously assesses the commercial value of all promotional offers and regrettably we have to advise you that effective 01 June 2008 we no longer offer an additional 10 kilo allowance for Scuba diving equipment.

Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to clarify our policy.

Yours sincerely

My reply focused on them not charging my mate for haing 25kg, that it was no longer cost effective to us them again an that their policy was unjust and clearly not standardised.

Theiving bastards, my bloody holiday was expensive enough without that!

S.

P.S. Trip report to follow

[BJ]

So now you know to fly Air Lanka via Colombo. (I assume it was to the Maldives.) Airlines make commercial decisions. Singapore Airlines is doing away with Economy Class on some routes. They don't think they need us cheap travellers. So I flew to Singapore recently with Malaysian via KL and it was excellent. It added an hour to my journey and saved around £300 on the cost of the Economy ticket (You can still fly Economy Class LHR to Singapore with SA if you can afford it.) and I got 10kg extra.

[RonProwse]

Thats £30/ kg i was under the impression that most airlines charge £6-7 per kg if your over

[BJ]

IATA rule: one percent of the First-class fare per kilo. That's about ten percent of the Economy-class fare per kilo.

[Ahoy]

Nope, was diving in the Arabian Gulf. I will certainly be ore thorough in my searches in future! Cheers for the tip on the Maldives though, would certainly go there for a weeks liveaboard again..
S.

[Midnight]

I am getting really sick of these golfball chasing ba$79rds over charging everyone else for their excess baggage.

This is an open request to all divebag maufacturers:

Please will someone make a divebag that looks like a golf bag, you will be the hero of us all...... Are you listening Stalsac (?sp), Mares etc. etc?

Just so long as I do not have to dress like a cheap pimp to complete the ruse.

Rant mode off
Midnight

[BigG]

A bit of a rant

I'm off to the maldives on honeymoon soon - booked through Virgin but flying with Emirates.

"Virgin say 2 * 23KG per person" on the phone and by email after booking. This seemed a little too good to be true so waited for the tickets to come through. Nothing mentioned on the new "piece o'paper crapola ticket relacement". And it's a bloody good job I checked too!

Phoned Virgin
Virgin - "23KG per person"
Me - "Sure? not 2 * 23KG? I am flying with Emirates not you."
Virgin - "Pretty sure - would you like to speak to someone who deals with bookings?
Me - "Yes"
Virgin2 - "One bag of 20KG each"
Me - "***K"

Our basic dive kit (2 divers) weighs 25KG so that leaves 15kg for everything else. Not good

Phone Emirates

Me - "What is my baggage allowance"
Emirates - "One case of 20KG per person - economy"
Me - "Can I buy more in advance"
Emirates - "No. You can try and book your luggage into cargo, but it might not be placed on the same place you fly out on"
Me - How much do you charge per kilo over your allowance"
Emirates " £38 per kilo"

Checked the website and definately no extra for dive kit.

So it looks like we will have to ditch out BCD's to save weight. Believe me I will be making every use of the 7KG hand luggage allowed!

In Summary - Emirates
Economy = 1 bag per person * 20KG
Hand luggage = 7KG (size restrictions on bag though)
No Extra for dive kit.
Can't buy additional allowance in advance
Each kilo over the limit = £38

Between Virgin and Emirates, we could have been totally screwed if I hadn't tripple checked the allowance! If we had turned up at the airport with 3 suitcases (say 20KG over) we were planning to, we would have been charged approximately £760 (I'm guessing one way!!)

Virgin - useless customer service staff (bar one who knew the answer)
Emirates - stingey bastards on baggage allowance

[/RANT]

G

[JasonP]

Originally Posted by BigG

Our basic dive kit (2 divers) weighs 25KG so that leaves 15kg for everything else. Not good

Be fine. You don't need any clothes in the Maldives anyway. The emphasis is very much on dressing down and it's stinking hot. Shoes are strictly optional.

That said, Maldives dive centres don't usually offer much of a discount for using your own kit anyway,

Jason

[BigG]

Originally Posted by JasonP

Be fine. You don't need any clothes in the Maldives anyway. The emphasis is very much on dressing down and it's stinking hot. Shoes are strictly optional.

That said, Maldives dive centres don't usually offer much of a discount for using your own kit anyway,

Jason

Cheers for the reassurance and tip mate

By the way - you don't understand just how many clothes my fiancee is (was) planning to take

G

[JasonP]

Originally Posted by BigG

Cheers for the reassurance and tip mate

By the way - you don't understand just how many clothes my fiancee is (was) planning to take

G

Oh, I can imagine. I knew one woman who took 5 pairs of shoes on a liveaboard. Needless to say, she didn't wear any of them all week.

Once on Meedhupparu, there was an Italian couple who dressed up every night. He even had a bezel on his watch that he used to change the colour of to match his outfit.

Naturally everyone, including the staff, found it highly amusing.

Jason