China – part 2 (of 20)

From its humble beginnings in 1985 with only 2 aircraft, Emirates received its 100th A380 in September 2017. Today, they fly the world’s biggest fleets of Airbus A380s and Boeing 777s.

The Dubai-Beijing flight on the Airbus A380-800 was much of the same: drink towel food towel drink towel food. Rinse repeat. The production of the show is just bigger, as it concurrently plays out over two decks. It is a daylight flight, but we are not aware, as our blinds are closed. After dinner, everyone slides down for a nap. PF and myself checked out the bar at the back and decided to go and say ‘hi’ to his sister downstairs. What a yin & yang. Their blinds are open. The masses formed unions and there is a riot looming. Flustered cabin crew tries to bulldoze trolleys down the aisle, whilst remembering their evacuation training. Plus, it is noisy. We stayed only long enough to be polite, then retreated to the now familiarity of upstairs.

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There are only 4 seats in a row compared to 10 downstairs. We sat in the middle next to each other, but being served by different waitresses. Due to the inconsideration of other diners, it often happened that PF’s glass got topped-up before mine. Naturally we felt this impacted on the experience and on our return leg from Hong Kong to Dubai (also on an A380) we requested to be served simultaneously. As Emirates is so eager to please, our booze pushing waitresses got replaced with ballet dancers and we got Swan Laked with every meal. Now this is classy – perfect synchronization one can only execute with years of soulless training in a UAE desert camp. Giselle who was pirouetting me, did lose some marks as the Olympian who was serving PF presented him with his mattress a good few seconds before I got mine. Obviously, she was immediately punished with another cocktail order.

Checkout the gorgeous selection of Emirate’s food below. For perspective, you will spot a few Chines domestic economy flight food pics as well.

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Continue reading China – part 3 (of 20).