Any travel experts/lawyers out there please

Hi All,

I'll try to be brief. My wife and I went on a special holiday to the Maldives in Feb this year. As it was special we saved up to travel business class.

There were 2 legs each way to the flight e.g. London/ Dubai  Dubai/Maldives. All flights were with Emirates.

On the return leg the 'plane from Maldives to Dubai was delayed. This delay meant that we missed our connecting flight to London. We were offered seats on the next flight two hours later. However, the only seats available were in economy. As we needed to be back in the U.K. next day we had no alternative but to take these seats.

We assumed that it would be straightforward to get the refund on the business class seats for that leg of the journey. This has been proved to bw wrong. We have been offered a total of £774. According to Emirates this calculation is based on an IATA formula which they told us to have explained to us by our travel agent. My calculations vary greatly from Emirates.  We paid £2155 each way for the 2 of us.

Taking into account that we got business class seats from Maldives to Dubai I calculated (by miles travelled each leg) that we should get a refund of £1387.10p

Emirates seem to be determined to only pay their original offer, which did include air miles but we want the money we feel we are owed.

Any advice welcome    

I work for an airline in theory you should be given back the fare diffrence of economy to the business fare that you paid (as there are many tiers of tickets) but in all honesty Emirates will probably say that you chose to downgrade to economy (even though this was your only option as you had to be home) and they could have got you  business  on another flight if you were prepared to wait so in airline speak you 'voluntarily downgraded'!

A BDB says try your credit card company or just keep on at Emirates! 

I hope this hasn't marred your special holiday too much

Thanks for replies. Strange thing is that if we could have waited and taken a flight next day then Emirates would have had to pay for hotels, meals etc. so would have cost them money and they still had the chance to sell the seats we would have taken on the next days flight.

We were told by our travel agent to try the tour operator so we will see