Worth choosing. Review on Emirates

Whilst booking my tickets for my recent trip to Mumbai, my travel agent informed me that Emirates had the best deal available. I have always been tempted to use the airline as it is rated very highly. However, I have never used it before as usually it is not that cheap compared to other airlines such as BA, AI and all its flights are via Dubai whereas BA etc fly directly to Bombay. This time the savings more that made up for my reasons I had for not flying with them.

I can not say that I was in anyway disappointed by my trip with Emirates. The check-in process was smooth and painless and the ground staff and crew were polite. The check-in didn’t take me too long but this was because I arrived at the airport before the normal three-hour check-in time that is currently in force. There seemed to be a reasonable amount of people who were more luggage than was usually allowed and this did mean that check-in could take longer than other airlines simply to sort out the excess baggage hat was being taken.

The flight itself was on time and left without any delay. The in-flight service was polite and the staff were professional and pleasant. There are a large number of staff with different nationalities who work for Emirates however they do include a couple of Indian language speakers on flights to Mumbai and there is always one Arabic speaker on each flight. The staff can and do get tough with passengers who are being difficult or who are in the way and this includes people who have a poor grasp of English. They also tend to not disturb people who are sleeping whilst distributing food and drink rather than waking them up. Some people like to be woken up whilst others do not so it depends on your preference as to whether you like this practice or not.

The food was reasonable. I didn’t book any particular food choices however I did ask when I booked and they only had a vegetarian or a child option that could be pre-booked. This is not as good as other airlines where you can get two/three vegetarian options, a kosher and low salt/sugar meals. The choice on board varied between a European and Indian option and was usually between chicken and a red meat. The chicken option is more popular and tends to finish. This happened to me once. The food itself was not brilliant and I left most of the main meal each time. It was quite rich and was often over cooked. I have tasted better food elsewhere.

The in-flight entertainment was very good, one of the best that I have been on. There is a choice of about 6 movie channels and 6 TV channels on each flight and they play several programme runs throughout the flight depending on the length, They have a choice English, Hindi and Arabic films. Most of the films were recent and there were always a choice appropriate for small children. The radio didn’t seem as good as other airlines but I didn’t really listen to it. The in-flight games were excellent. Whilst not being overtly modern games they had all the old favourites such as tetris, solitaire etc. They also had crossword puzzles along with a couple of games where you could play against other passengers on board. This was good fun and I whiled away a lot of time playing games.

The aircraft that I travelled on had cameras on the bottom and front of the aircraft through which you could see where the plane was flying and over what. This was quite novel as it allowed you a pilots view of flying and landing which was good fun. I have not seen this on other airlines.

The people who travel on Emirates are quite varied. There is usually a good mix of people. On the Dubai to Mumbai sector there are a lot of passengers from the lower strata of society and a lot whose grasp of English was poor. Unfortunately this means that the staff on board do sometimes get hassled and the standards of cleanliness do drop during the flight in particularly in the toilets. This is annoying but it is the passengers who are to blame and not the airline as it happens on most of the others too.

On the way back I was upgraded for part of my trip on business class. Apart from the seats being bigger with more legroom and the airhostesses being more like waitresses the quality of food/drink did not seem to vary by much although you did get complimentary champagne/orange on boarding. Unfortunately as it was 4 in the morning I was not too keen on champagne at that time.

My only gripe with the flight was that the timings were not very reasonable. I flew out at 10am which allowing for travel and 3 hour check in meant that I had to get up at 5am and on the way back I left at 4.30am which meant I got no sleep before hand. Also the flight from London to Dubai is short around 3 hours and so there is not much sleeping time on the journey. I was really tired by the time I returned to London at 12.00pm and any plans I had had of working when I returned did not happen. If you have to fly to London on business then the timings of the flight are not very reasonable and you are better off flying BA or another airline instead.

All in all I was happy with the experience I had on Emirates. Whether I would travel with them again depends on the ticket prices they offer me. If I get a very cheap deal again then I probably would even though the lack of sleep was not pleasant. If there is no good deal then probably not as other airlines like BA have better timings which are more convenient for me.