We flew with Emirates from Heathrow when we went on honeymoon and found the airline to be fantastic. It is a United Arab Emirates airline, with its HQ based in Dubai.
A few weeks prior to departure, we contacted Emirates to pre-book our seats so that we knew we would be sitting together. Emirates were happy to meet all our requests and ensured that we had a window seat and the adjacent seat, not directly over the wing and gave us our seat numbers in advance for each leg of our flight.
Our first destination was Dubai, and we were delighted to find that, when we got our boarding passes at Heathrow, the seat numbers were exactly the same as those we had been given when we pre-booked the seats a few weeks beforehand.
When we boarded the plane, we found it was among the best we had been on (and we have flown to 32 different countries without many repeat airlines). There was plenty of legroom, even though we were in Economy, the food was lovely (you can’t often say this about food on a plane) and the cabin crew went out of their way to make us feel comfortable.
One of the best points about the aircraft was that you had your own TV screen in the back of the seat in front of you. They had individual controls so that you could watch something completely different from the person next to you. It also had a games channel, giving you a variety of games to play. There was also a quiz channel, where you could play against other passengers on the plane.
One of the most unusual features on the plane was that it had cameras on the front, side and underneath of the aircraft. Passengers could watch the view from these cameras on the personal TV’s. This was a particularly good feature as we came in to land at our second destination, Maldives. I set my TV screen to the forward camera and my husband set his to the under aircraft camera. This view enabled us to pick out the coral reefs, while the view on my screen had us slightly worried. The airport at the Maldives is on its own (very small) island. The runway starts at one end of the island and finishes at the other end. On landing, the forward camera showed the end of the runway speedily approaching, and the sea getting closer! It was a fantastic experience.
As I mentioned, Emirates HQ is in Dubai and the main offices are located on the airport complex. The building it is housed in has to be one of the most unusual I have ever seen – it is built in the shape of a jumbo jet!
In all, we were very pleased with Emirates and would have no hesitation to fly with them again. In fact, given the choice between Emirates and most other airlines, we would ‘Fly Emirates’.
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Ge after watching the tv on landing id need a holiday as not a very keen flier.. a nice review - lynsey x
Bollinger28 24.10.2004 10:57
I flew with them about ten years ago and they were really good - they were the first airline to install the individual TV screens and they were such a novelty at the time ! Lexy
John1958 17.10.2004 00:00
The features you mentioned were (pleasantly) almost all available on my recent BMI transatlantic flight - except the quiz thingy. Sounds like an airline I would use...John
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Advantages: Spacious seats, choice of economy or business class, good onboard facilities. Disadvantages: A little pricey for a short journey. Crew uniforms could be brightened up a bit.
Oct 8th, 2004
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