My partner and I had the misfortune to fly Emirates Flight EK038 in mid June 2017, from Birmingham to Dubai, with connecting flight EK707 to the Seychelles.
Just prior to landing at Dubai International Airport, the aircraft diverted to nearby Al Maktoum airport, apparently due to fog. The pilot said that the aircraft would refuel in about 20 minutes then take off again for Dubai International. However it was 165 minutes later that we actually did take off, and we finally landed at Dubai International three hours late!
Consequently we missed our connecting flight to the Seychelles.
Emirates representatives at Dubai Airport seemed disorganised, and unprepared to process the hundreds of us who needed rescheduled flights, even though they had had three hours to prepare, and hence resulted in very long queues for us in order to find out when Emirates could put us on the next flight to our respective destinations.
In our case we were queueing for over 160 minutes before being booked on the next flight to the Seychelles (about 2 am the next day) and provided with accommodation in a local hotel. We were told our suitcases would be sent to the hotel approximately 4 hours later, but that we would need to stay at the hotel until the suitcases arrived so that we could identify them.
However our suitcases never turned up, and we literally spent hours trying to track them down, but not much before the time our flight took off for the Seychelles, so they stayed at the airport with Baggage services, some staff of which were arrogant and unhelpful when we went back to the airport to locate our suitcases!
This was not only very inconvenient, it was also frustrating and a significant nuisance as we hadn't been able to leave the hotel or freshen up before returning to the airport to fly to the Seychelles, arriving approximately 18 hours later than we should have, and having paid for a luxury hotel there for the night we were stuck in Dubai!
When we complained to Emirates about all of this, including the incompetence of Dubai baggage services, they were essentially arrogant in their response and offered no compensation of any value!
Whilst it could be argued that the fog that had caused the original flight delay was an Act of God, the ensuing problems were caused by Emirates and Dubai Baggage Services! Clearly International travel legislation needs to be strengthened, and more rights given to travellers caught up in such situations, where they are severely inconvenienced and significantly out of pocket, to be able to legally pursue customer unfocused airlines such as Emirates for compensation!
Needless to say we will not be flying Emirates in the future, and will do our best to avoid Dubai International airport completely!