Emirates what have you [un]done?

My impressions of the A380-800 inaugural from from Bangkok to Dubai are that I was very disappointed.

I have followed the development and launch of the A380 with everyone and I have seen promotional videos of the various cabins on the aircraft as they are offered by various airlines.

When I got into the Business Class cabin of this A380 I was very disappointed. So disappointed that I invented a new word: Emirates has sardinised its business class passengers for this aeroplane. In the Emirates Boeing 777ER, on which I have also travelled business class, there are far fewer business class seats and the level of personalised service is much higher. Fair enough, they don't know how to make a decent vegetarian sandwich but there you are, a trifling detail!

Last night, I felt let down: so many seats and it seemed to me that we were being serviced by the same number of crew as in Economy Class. Not what I upgraded for!

They had not registered my vegetarian meal request although there was a generic vegetarian option on the menu. They asked me, however, what I wanted and I did stress my vegetarian requirements: the stewardess said no problem and wrote it all down. Then she brought me my appetiser that included some sea food. She apologised and promised me the vegetarian alternative but it never came.

The meal itself was fine: the mezzes were good. I like Middle Eastern food anyway so there was never going to be a problem with that! The tortellini was basically poor as I could have made/prepared better myself. Dessert was good, a chocolate cake with custard ... foreigners, however, fail to appreciate the English appetite for custard and around 15 millilitres is far from adequate! I have to say that by the time the meal service had finished it was well past midnight and getting rather late for me. We had a nominal take off time of 2125 and took off at almost exactly 2200.

The service of the food was rather offhand and the level of service I felt was in direct proportion to the number of crew on duty.

I did like the bar area as that attracted a number of people, including me. I took an orange juice and could have eaten snacks all night. The good point is that it strikes me as a good opportunity to get out of your seat and meet someone who might be interesting. I met a man in the bar from Bangkok in there, originally from St Helens, who was on THE inaugural A380 flight with Singapore Airlines that flew from Singapore to Sydney. He had all his certificates on display for everyone to see: it's one of 4 such inaugural flights he's done now.

No other refreshments were served although they were always available in the bar and each seat has its own little bar with water, juice and so on available.

One thing that they might have to change is that many of the men travelling last night had rather large stomachs so the slide out tables will be unusable by many of them! That's a fundamental marketing and design flaw in my opinion! Of course, I didn't have a problem!

The entertainment system is excellent, I have to say. The large touch screen is excellent and the controls on screen are a doddle to use. There is even a mini control pod thing for each seat that controls the video and audio as well as the seat.

The seat is heavily marketed as being 100% flat bed: nope! Mine did not go 100%, not far off but not far enough for me to be able to sleep in it as if it were a flat bed. I did sleep a couple of hours though.

One nice touch: after I had paid a visit to the bar I got back to find that someone had made up my bed with some sort of mini mattress and they had folded my blanket really nicely. That was good!

Here is my certificate of having flown that inaugural flight:

One final thing: this is my first ever inaugural flight and I have to say I thought that Emirates would have made a bit more of a fuss of us than they did!

DW