Several years ago I flew Emirates Airways. At the time I lived in Seoul, Korea and purchased my ticket with Emirates to go somewhere, don't even remember where. I had enough miles with one of their partners to upgrade to business class. My first flight was business class and quite nice BUT as fates had it in for me that year, by the time I boarded the plane to return home, my business class seat had dissolved and was gone somehow and I had to fly economy which I hated because it's a long flight from Seoul to Dubai. I swore I would not fly them again but they were so apologetic about the mix up and the resulting disappearance of my upgrade, that they promised to upgrade me for free on my next flight, no matter what class of ticket I purchased.
OK, still in Seoul, but I thought I'd give it another go and purchased an economy class ticket to go through Dubai on the way to elsewhere and upgraded to business, for free. To do this, I had to spent a lot of time in the bowels of Kimpo airport in Seoul (Inchon was not up and running yet) but got my upgrade and everything looked promising until I flew into Dubai and had to go to their service desk to get my upgraded business class boarding pass. And I only had about an hour to do it. Of course there was NO RECORD in their computer with my upgrade and so I ended up flying back to Seoul in economy class again!!!! I swore on anyone's grave that this time I would stick to my guns and never fly Emirates again - ever - not ever, never.
One should never say never :) This trip to the Seychelles, there was no way we were going to fly economy and turns out Emirates Air had the best prices for business class. Oh my. I was going to have to eat my words it appears and get those tickets.
I must say that the experience with Emirates Air this time was delightful and pleasant and enjoyable. They have certainly stepped up their game for business class so hopefully they have for economy class as well. We were picked up for free at our home and driven to the airport where there was a dedicated check in area for business and first class. You get a fast pass to go through security which really never does much but it is nice that they try to get you through faster. Once inside the terminal, you can go to the lounge and there was direct boarding from the lounge onto the plane. OMG. No fraternizing with the "riff raff" in economy! How funny is that! And of course, there is food all the time. If we ate all the food they offered, we probably would have gained 2 or 3 pounds on each flight and time spent in the lounges!
I am not a big fan of Airbus and the huge planes that are now coursing through the skies. Don't get the whole physics of flying and keeping something that huge in the air plus when it takes off, it doesn't ever seem as if it is going fast enough to lift off the ground. But they do and it is certainly comfortable seating. Emirates has cameras mounted on the outside of the planes so you can see the plane rushing down the runway and taking off which is pretty cool. These huge planes also have pretty good entertainment and Emirates has a small lounge area where you can go get drinks or snacks during the flight.
Our whole experience with Emirates was really good this time. I appreciate that they have gotten much better at their business than there were years ago and I'm glad I tried flying them again.
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