[dmorris]

I was booked on a round-trip flight, with one stop in each direction. Three weeks prior to departure, the second of the four legs was canceled. To be clear: the flight was canceled, not delayed. The flight was EK717 from DXB to NBO on 11/4/17; I'm sure its cancellation is publicly verifiable.

I was able to book an alternative flight for this leg on another airline (at my own expense, of course), so I will still use my return flight on Emirates. Because the second leg was canceled (not by me, by Emirates), Emirates considered this "re-issuing my ticket", and required me to pay $178.90. To *not use the flight that they canceled*.

They will say that they offered me a full refund to cancel the whole trip, which is true. But they also know that very few travelers can cancel an international trip three weeks prior to departure without losing thousands of dollars. I'm flying economy, not flying NetJets. So charging me $178.90 is *purely abusive fee extraction*, and they know that.

I have filed a complaint with the DOT, but I'm posting here as well to advocate for what I think is a fairly concrete and straightforward policy issue: *not* using part of your flight should not require you to pay any money in any scenario, but *especially* when the airline canceled the flight. This is not as subjective as "my bags were mishandled" or "the flight attendant was rude" (which aren't great, don't get me wrong); this is simply paperwork and semantics that resulted in me paying $178.90 (in addition to the cost I paid to another airline for my replacement flight) and them being able to charge another customer for the seat I'm not using.

Here's to hoping no one else has experienced anything like this. Ugh.

To their credit, calling them on the phone was easy and customer service was perfectly polite and matter-of-fact about this issue. I'm trying to be as balanced as I can be here... ugh.

-Dan