EK37 DXB-BHX 24 June 06 (Economy)
Posted: 25 Jun 2006, 08:14Dropped off at the Emirates Business class check in area (as Skywards silver you are allowed to check in there instead of facing the economy queues). Following check in the business and first class area takes you through a smaller bag scan area and then the hike to the main duty free area. Had a look around and picked up a couple of bottles of JD (it seems to be cheaper in DXB than in Birmingham airport) and headed off to the lounge.
The lounge offered is the one between gates 8 and 10. This is shared with Kenya Airways, Qatar and a few other airlines and is comparably smaller than the normal Emirates business class lounge which is somewhere by gate 21. It was extremely busy but managed to find 2 seats facing the apron and did a bit of plane spotting. Nothing spectacular there - Emirates and a couple of Air India's hanging around. Although we did see a Virgin 340-600 when we were taxiing.
Made the most of the food and drink in the lounge - lots of selection of cold meats/fruit/cakes/sandwiches as well as hot food consisting of beef in red wine/chilli chicken/veal curry and some others I can't pronounce (let alone spell). All mainstream drinks available on a help yourself basis (except champagne which when we flew last September with them was available in the main Emirates lounge).
Settled into our seats of 9A&B set out in a 2-4-2 basis. These felt quite cramped compared to the exit row on the way out but I did appreciate the footrest which of course you don't get with exit row. These seats are about the 3 row down in ecomony class so useful if you want a quick exit when landing. However, for some reason Emirates seem to fill the plane from front to back and as the flight was only 50% there was an awful lot of spare space at the back. I utilised this four a couple of hours and curled up for a nap on a two spare window seats as I had got a little sick of a woman sitting behind mine laughing so loud throughout her film it just got annoying. I could still hear her when I turned my film up to full volume [:(]. She then continued to %$*' me off when she continually prodded the touch screen changing channels. Sorry prod is an understatement, thumped more like [B)]. Thank god for those spare seats.
On the flipside though, the guy sitting in front of me peered over the seat and asked if I minded him reclining. I requested he recline to the halfway position and he obliged. When I moved seats, I thought it only fair to repay him for his kindness and informed him I was moving for a while and did he want to fully recline which he promptly did. On my return, he put his seat back to half recline again to give me more space. I was so grateful to him for his thoughtfulness, I thanked him when we landed.
Again, the usual IFE roll around system on the 330-200 and watched a Harrison Ford film called 'Firewall' and played games for about an hour.
The drinks service was very quick after take off followed by another nice meal choice of Red Thai chicken curry or salmon and potatoes followed by Tiramisu.
About an hour from landing, tea/coffee, biscuits/penguin cake bar were offered.
The crew again were efficient but the one steward on the flight showed that Emirates staff do have a friendly side - but he was well and truly Oz and had a great sense of fun when serving - not rude just really comical. I hope Emirates get some more staff like that as it makes the flight seem so much more friendly.
As we were at the front of the plane, business class passengers quickly departed followed swiftly by us cattle. Another Spanish flight came in but managed to get past the majority of them and went quickly through immigration.
Thank god for priority baggage again, our case was about the 2nd one off - the timing on the whole from plane landing at 1935 through immigration and out for our lift home was about 20 minutes - beat that LHR!