Went into the Aspire lounge (ex-Servisair) which has been refurbished and is better/larger than before. It has a hot soup offering and nibbles, with wines/spirits/soft drinks.
Arrived at gate and placed in a holding pen for 30 minutes and couldn't believe how many families were due to board as I thought the children had gone back to school. The gate agent said a lot of the families were returning to India after visiting relatives in the UK which made sense.
Upon boarding, realised the exit row was next door to the galley in the last section of the plane and also the bulkhead so babies! This was a flight that was meant to be a sleeper but none was had due to the constant noise.
Meals (chicken/fish/veggie options) were served after quite a while (in UK time at midnight) with no drinks service to enable everyone to sleep (except me and the babies) but the trays were not cleared for about an hour and no wine was offered with the meal or coffee afterwards.
The crew did walk around with soft drinks trays throughout the night.
About 90 minutes before landing, breakast was brought round and thankfully the trays were cleared more quickly this time.
For an evening flight, service was really slow at the beginning bearing in mind it's a sleeper flight and went out late so sleep was all most people wanted.
Connecting flight report as follows:
As we were late, we missed our connecting flight at 0830, so Emirates arranged a 1235 flight with Oman Air to Muscat. We moved from T3 to T2 which was quite a hike and obtained a fresh boarding pass from the "other Airlines" transfer desk as EK had washed their hands of us and couldn't give us anything at their transfer desks. We enquired about our chauffeur transfer at this desk and was advised to see the Oman Air duty manager who was overseeing the 1000 flight at the gate to MCT. I asked about transferring to that flight but was advised we couldn't as our baggage wouldn't make it.
At 0900 we went to the gate and asked if the duty manager could assist in contacting Muscat airport and reschedule our chauffeur. He said he couldn't do that but would be able to put us on the 1000 flight with or without our luggage. If the bag didn't make it, they could send it by taxi to our hotel. He then reprinted us fresh boarding passes.
While waiting at the gate, we spotted a lone open lorry with our even more lonely suitcase on it. The hold was reopened on the little Embraer aircraft and the case was loaded.
The plane was great for a 50 minute flight. It had a small business class section on a 1-2 configuration and economy in a 2-2 configuration. The legroom was better than EK and the seats wider. The flight was very quiet. They served a beef or chicken roll with a soft cold drink and we were quite impressed for a short flight as BA only serve this sort of meal on longer flights we've had to Rome.
We managed to sort out our transfer and Visa when we arrived in MCT which took about 30 minutes after tracking down our lost contact by the staff there.
I was very impressed with the Oman Air staff we dealt with and the short flight. They seemed to take ownership if there were difficulties whereas EK just leave you to your own devices once they've done what they have to, ie. find a new flight for you due to their own delay. There were 10 people transferring to the MCT flight who missed it and we were the only ones on the 1000 Oman Air flight just because we went to the gate - everyone else would have just wandereed around DXB airport for 4 1/2 hours, whilst we were languishing in luxury at our hotel, so were very pleased.
