An uneventful journey to Manchester followed – the driver took a route I’d never have thought of, but he had traffic-master & also a GPS tracker linked to their base, so he knew where the jams were.
I appreciate we are at the height of the school holidays in the UK, but Manchester T1 this morning was absolute bedlam. The queue for security was snaking out of the security area right back to the entrance door near the Etihad / Emirates check-in area. You had to make your way through the security queue to get to check-in. Bag dropped & I then went to join the security queue. Thankfully a kind member of MAN ground staff clocked the Business Class tags on my hand luggage and told me to use Fastrack (the check-in agent had made no mention of it). Fought my way up to the Fastrack entrance and walked past an awful lot of people in the zig-zag queue for security. I was through in under 5mins – I dread to think what the wait time in the normal queue was though. Made a quick stop in a couple of the shops to get stuff people had asked me for, then up to the Emirates Lounge.
Enjoyed a quiet hour and a half in the lounge – the wifi is a bit iffy though, was constantly logging you out & you had to log back in after the shortest spell of inactivity. Made the mistake of wandering down to the gate area ahead of the boarding call (on arrival at the lounge I was told this would be around 09:30). Got to the gate at about this time and the monitors all said Boarding, but nothing was happening. The ground crew were making no announcements. Eventually boarding started at about 09:50 – so we are clearly not going to get away on time.
Boarded via L1 and was greeted by name by the Emirates equivalent of the FSM – a very nice young Australian lady. Was then passed onto a crew member who took me to my seat. Said crew member introduced himself by name & advised that he would be one of the crew looking after the Business Class cabin today.
Boarding the entire aircraft took a while, but various crew introduced themselves during this time. Pre-takeoff drinks were offered & the champagne was accepted. No refills offered, but on this occasion I was not really bothered – I want to arrive in Dubai with a clear head.
The Menu is the same as when I last flew this route back in late April – does anyone know how often Emirates change menu cycle? Looks like I’ll be having the Salmon followed by the Beef.
I did have the salmon & then the beef – both were very good this time round. After 2 courses I was well and truly stuffed. Did like the salad they served too – certainly two courses that put any Upper Class meal offering to shame. As my meal tray was cleared away, I did ask for some cheese to be held back for me for later in the flight – which was not a problem.
The cabin went into it’s “quiet mode” for a few hours. About 2hrs out of Dubai the crew came round to take any afternoon tea orders that people may have had. The crew member taking the order said to me “do you want the cheese from lunch?” without being prompted. Very on-the-ball. The said cheese was delivered and once again, it put any Upper Class cheese offering to shame. The crew member even left me the packet of water biscuits and told me to help myself – as they would only be going in the bin in an hour and a bits time.
Afternoon tea was cleared away and the cabin was secured for landing in Dubai. Had a pretty smooth landing only 20mins behind schedule. We were allocated a gate that was as far as possible from the Immigration / baggage claim area. After the long walk from the aircraft, the bags still took 25mins to arrive. What seemed like one container-load were on the carousel as I arrived in baggage claim, but then everything ground to a halt for 25mins. Quite unusual for the normally uber-efficient Dubai Airport.
Having picked up a little cheap alcohol in Arrivals Duty Free, it was outside to put my life in the hand of a taxi driver with dubious driving standards. Made it to the Marina in about half an hour… and boy is it hot. 35C and very humid, even at 10pm. Tomorrow could be interesting!
To summarize, todays EK flight from MAN to DXB was pretty much excellent. The crew were very on the ball & used your name in just about every interaction with you. The food was of a very good quality (VS – take note!) and your needs were looked after well. Unlike my last EK flight from MAN, there were hot towel runs aplenty (4 or 5 on todays flight) and the drawers in the toilets were well stocked with amenity kit items.
Based on todays experience – if I wanted to get to DXB again, Virgin would have to be offering a killer fare to make me even consider travelling down to LHR (even with the lure of the Clubhouse, but then the risk of the Dream Suite). When you get a good crew on EK, they certainly tick all the boxes - and some. That old “consistency” chestnut again!
I’ve said it before & will say it again – I can only see it being a matter of time before VS (& probably BA) drop the DXB route to use the LHR slots on more lucrative routes. Emirates have got UK-DXB stitched-up, big time.
