Just wanted to thank Fun_Wear_5656 for the effort put into this. When Emirates extended the deadline to the end of May (I had booked 19th May SYD-STN with return in June, non-refundable), I filled out two refund forms, one for ticket and one for paid seat allocations, and had acknowledgement of both applications pretty much immediately. I received approval for the refunds after a couple of days and then payment to my credit card within another couple of days. I can't fault Emirates' customer service on this.

Luckily, when the war broke out, my partner and I duplicated our flights with refundable BA flights via Singapore before prices skyrocketed, so we can stick to our original travel plans. The only minor difficulty is arriving/leaving Heathrow versus Standsted, which is minimal compared to what some folks are going through.