#918472 by Fuzzy14
07 Mar 2016, 13:46
In Dubai for a few days with work. I managed to finish work by lunchtime on Friday so enquired about getting put on the 3pm Emirates that afternoon however they wanted £333 to change the tickets so I decided to stick around and see the place (up until then it was airport-taxi-hotel-taxi-office etc). Got the metro from my hotel near Emirates HQ down to the Burj Khalifa, took about 40 minutes but it gave nice views on the way there. Metro got reasonably busy (Friday afternoon) and don’t make the mistake of trying to enter the woman’s only section of the carriage! Took a walk around the utterly huge Address Dubai Mall, had a good but expensive 5 Guys, took in the views of the ridiculous Burj, found that the shops weren’t as cheap as I hoped, nearly got thrown out of Tiffany’s and then back to the hotel pretty tired! It’s a lot of walking.

Up at 4am to get the hotel shuttle bus to the airport, and I was there for 5am for my 7.20am flight. Had to check in manually at the desk which is quite a walk away from the front door. I’m impressed by the airport where most of the functional parts of the airport are located underneath where the planes park but it’s as if they’ve got too much space and they don’t know what to do with it all.

The passport queue was quite busy so we didn’t get up to the duty free until 6am. Like the Dubai Mall some things were a good price but other things were fairly typical, the days of cheap Dubai Duty Free are over. I managed to get myself a new iPhone 5S for £230 so I was happy with that purchase, my boys got some Emirates branded things, and some Pandora charms for Mrs Fuzzy but in hindsight they were the same price as the UK.

By then it was 6.40am and I thought I’d heard the flight called so I made my way to the gate to find all the passengers already loaded. I was selected for further checks by security before being the 3rd last to board, my work colleague looking relieved as he hadn’t been able to find me in the duty free! Same seats as the outbound flight but it was a lighter load so after the doors closed we managed to spread out a little and have a spare seat between us. The plane seemed to take a grand tour of Dubai airport before finally taking off on runway 30R at 7.40am

Again having the exit rows meant I couldn’t use the IFE or the cameras to watch the take off. I decided to pay $1 for 500MB of internet data (!) so texting/twitter with some friends in America was most of my entertainment on the way home. I also watched the progress of my flight on Flightradar24, it still feels rather odd to use the internet on a plane, the speed and reliability was surprisingly good.

Food was soon served:

Continental Breakfast
Fruit Fresh Seasonal Fruit
Main Course
Cheese Selection red leicester and labneh
Bread Croissant served with butter and preserve
Hot Drinks Tea or Coffee

Lunch
Appetiser
Smoked Turkey on potato and apple salad with walnuts
Main Course Grilled Chicken with tomato and olive sauce, seasoned vegetables and mashed potatoes
Grilled Salmon Fillet served with dill cream, saffron rice and seasonal vegetables

Dessert
Chocolate and Orange Cake with orange and passion fruit coulis
Chocolate
Hot Drinks Tea or Coffee

So disappointed it wasn’t a hot breakfast (which is probably a British thing so unreasonable to expect it) which I ate then went for a doze. After I woke up the pixies had cleared it all away so I got stuck into watching the IFE. There is perhaps the biggest choice of IFE I have ever seen on the Emirates but as they have to cater for many nationalities so only around half of the selection was in English. I actually ended up watching Star Wars episodes 2 and 3 which I’d previously never really have the time to watch all the way. Lunch was then served before landing, vegetables were rather chewy but the salmon was alright.

Found the flight back much better than the way out, maybe it’s because it was quieter (60% load), had more space which allowed me to have a decent sleep, or just I was more relaxed because I was heading home. Landed on time in Glasgow at 11.20am (I’d been up since midnight), was straight through security and into the car park within 15 minutes where it was snowing! Quite the difference!


Ground 3* Okay but nothing to write home about
Crew 4* Fairly good, fairly anonymous
Food 3* More food than on the way out, decent enough quality
Seats 4* Much more comfortable having the spare seat between us
Entertainment 3* Industry standard

Overall yes would definitely use Emirates on the route again or if I was going further east as there’s no real competition for them unless I travel Etihad from Edinburgh as the convenience of a good quality direct flight outweighs any argument for going via London or Amsterdam. I’ll make it a point of travelling business if I need to do some work, returning in economy seemed fine.

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