Arrived from Vienna, Austria to Dubai last Wednesday evening. Touch down at 9:20pm, shuttling on buss around the airport, arrived into the transit hall and started to run (actually I never run at the airport, mostly civilized quick walking) heading the gate where my Emirates flight was leaving towards Islamabad, Pakistan at 10:15 pm. I knew it was a tight one, that’s why I asked two people, one from Emirates, one from airport staff, to call the gate that I am coming; they said that just hurry, you will make it.

Arrived to the gate, saw “final call” sign, walked in, and heard the question “Are you Mr. Eerola?”, followed by a phrase I especially didn’t want to hear “Gate is closed now”. Plane there behind the window, I can see the door is open but they couldn’t or didn’t want to let me in. As most of the time, I was travelling Bond style i.e. without luggage so that was not the barrier here.

After few minutes of discussions, she asked her supervisor to come to talk with me. Supervisor, very positive and smiling guy, explained and explained but never said “I am sorry”. First mistake.

I asked why you don’t call your customers – I am Emirates member and having a business class ticket – and he said that they don’t have my number. I did show him a copy of the booking confirmation and even it clearly stated my mobile phone number. Second mistake.

Next he said; “We are not actually calling our customers since some customer have been complaining about calling them”. After what he just said earlier, this was a practical lie, I felt. Third mistake, anyway.

I wondered why they ask people’s phone numbers upon booking process if you are not calling them? No reasonable answer, just saying “What would you do in my position?”. Fourth mistake, final and big one.

Dear Emirates supervisor, I know definitely what I would have done – I would have called the customer, I would have announced the customer, I would have made everything I can to find out if my valuable customer can make the flight or not. That’s called customer service; that’s called customer management.

Dear CMO or Director of Customer Service at Emirates, I would propose you to go through your booking process as well as your customer management and re-think why in heck you are asking for that phone number if you never call? And if you don’t call, maybe you should re-consider? For some reason every other airline in the world have been calling me; so many times during the years. Or maybe I am just not so interesting client for Emirates?

What was the end of the story? They re-routed me to Karachi (i.e. I had to walk down to Transit center, wait for bookings, and go back to departure floor through the security) but they, or anyone else at the airport couldn’t book me into a PIA flight towards Islamabad. Had a drink, opened my laptop at lounge and made a booking on PIA on their website by myself. What would have happened if I didn’t use computer? Such a people do exists too.