Dubai: When 35-year-old Chartered Accountant Mikhil Sarawagi landed in Dubai after a long flight from San Francisco, he cleared immigration and then looked down at his wrist. His gold bracelet was gone.
“I checked my pockets, my bag, everything. It was not there,” the Indian expat said.
Sarawagi was in Dubai on a three-day stopover, while on his way back to Mumbai, and his first thought was he may not ever see the bracelet again. It was a birthday gift from his wife, one he’d gotten just three months earlier.
He said: “It’s a small bracelet, it’s a big airport and there are so many people. I thought, who will find it?”
Yet, he decided to try his luck. On his way out of Dubai International Airport, he approached the Emirates desk, where a staff member calmly took down the details of his journey, including his flight and seat number. Then she said something that Sarawagi remembers clearly: “Sir, don’t worry. You will get it back. Either it is on the flight or at the airport, we will find it.”
Sarawagi, on the other hand, was not quite as confident. When he raised doubts and said that anyone could have picked it up, her response was clear: “Sir, people have lost Rolex watches here and we have found those too.”
Found on his seat
Her confidence turned out to be well placed. In just 24 hours, Sarawagi received an email from Emirates informing him that the bracelet had been found – it had been left behind on his airplane seat and found by cleaning staff.
What’s more, the email even mentioned the belonging would be couriered to him in case he had already left the city.
“They told me that if I had already left Dubai, they would courier it to India free of cost. No charges, no ‘something extra’ for the staff, nothing. And they kept following up with me till the bracelet was back in my hands,” he said.
Speaking to Emirates 24|7 just as he landed back in Mumbai today, Sarawagi said the experience has increased his trust in Dubai even more.
“What stayed with me was the honesty,” he said. “The person who found it could have kept it and nobody would have known,” he said.
“That one line – ‘Sir, don’t worry, you will get it back’ – gave me so much relief even before they had found anything,” he added.
Part of a promise
In a response to Emirates 24|7, Emirates described Sarawagi’s experience as part of its ‘Fly Better’ promise to customers.
Launched in 2018, ‘Fly Better’ is the airline’s brand promise centred on delivering a better customer experience throughout the journey, both in the air and on the ground.
‘Only on Emirates’
Sarawagi’s experience also echoes another experience recently published in Emirates 24|7.
When Naoufer Ramoul, a senior TV presenter and producer at Dubai Media Incorporated, left behind a pair of inexpensive earphones on an Emirates flight to the Maldives, she had assumed they were gone for good.
Days later, an Emirates employee at the check-in counter in Malé handed her the earphones in a sealed bag, as she made her way back.
Her reaction?
“Only on Emirates.”
Sarawagi’s sentiments – after the experience of losing and being reunited with the gold bracelet – are the same.
“Thank you Emirates, and thank you Dubai, for the honesty and the care,” he said. “You have got a customer for life,” he said.
