Travelled to Bangalore from Dubai on 05 June 09 by EK566, economy class. The new Terminal 3 in Dubai was excellent with hardly and crowd at the check in counters and I got myself checked in within 5 minutes. The aircraft was about 70% filled capacity. I was travelling with an infant and so opted for a basinet seat which I had pre booked.
After the flight took off and the seat belt signs went off, I asked the Indian FA to set up the Baby Bassinet. She set it up 25 minutes after I requested. All this time, I could not use the IFE since the baby was on my lap - poor service 1st incident
My wife noticed that the FA had not waxed her hands and some hair was visible. We understand that it during times of recession, airlines have to resort to recruiting less experienced / new staff for cost cutting reasons, but basic grooming should not be ignored.- 2nd incident
The menu was handed over and my food tray arrived without the main dish and I was told it would come soon. After 30 minutes and several reminders, one FA comes to me and says" sorry sir, your requested main dish has run out, can you accept an alternative" . I was very hungry and accepted the alternate main dish. Why hand out the menu card when we cannot get the meal of choice, and mind you the flight was not full, so no room for excuses! 3rd incident.
The highly acclaimed ICE IFE system shows movies and other channels in different languages but does not have a feature to Pause the movie or rewind or forward to a certain scene. So if we go away to use the toilet when in the middle of a movie, we miss the scene. Not so in the case of Etihad airways which has all the features.
The above 3 incidents force me to give a poor rating for Emirates Airlines. Even certain Budget airlines in the region have a better quality of service.