Booking the Trip: Annual India Visit with Emirates and Air India
Review: Emirates Airline A380 Economy Los Angeles to Dubai
Review: Emirates Airline A380 Economy Dubai to Mumbai
Review: Pune Lohegaon Airport Terminal
Review: Air India A319-100 Economy Class Pune to Hyderabad
Review: Plaza Premium Lounge Hyderabad Domestic Terminal
Review: Air India A319-100 Business Class Hyderabad to Pune
Review: Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport Terminal 2 International
Review: Emirates Airline 777-300 Economy Mumbai to Dubai
Review: Dubai International Airport Terminal 3
Review: Emirates Airline A380 Economy Dubai to Los Angeles
YOUTUBE: Emirates: Los Angeles to Dubai
YOUTUBE: Emirates: Dubai to Mumbai
YOUTUBE: Air India: Pune to Hyderabad
YOUTUBE: Air India: Hyderabad to Pune
YOUTUBE: Emirates: Mumbai to Dubai
YOUTUBE: Emirates: Dubai to Los Angeles
After spending a solid 9 hours at Dubai Airport’s hub terminal for Emirates, we made our way to concourse A for our flight to Los Angeles.
We made our way through the first door on the main deck and reached our seats 45J and 45K.
I already thoroughly reviewed this seat on my flight from Los Angeles to Dubai, so I won’t be reviewing it here. One thing to keep in mind is that while almost all the seats on Emirates’s A380 economy class seats have a USB charger and a power plug, the K seats (window seats on the right side) have only the USB port and no power plug. If you are a solo traveler, this can be a bit problematic for a 16-hour flight if you need to use your laptop a lot, but thankfully for me, my relative was sitting next to me so I used her charging port when needed.
We also got the menus for the flight today.
After a while, boarding was complete and we began our long taxi.
We eventually reached the end of runway 12R and turned onto the runway for takeoff. Our aircraft was very heavy today from a full tank of fuel for the long flight, every seat occupied, and all the other weight from baggage and seats. This combined with the thin, dry, gulf air made for a very long takeoff roll. We had a very slow and gradual climb out of Dubai Airport. Even though the pictures do not reflect it since WordPress compresses image quality, the views on the climb were a joy to see.
And after a short while, we turned north to fly towards the north pole.
A while after we reached cruising altitude, the crew began breakfast service.
Emirates never fails to do a thorough job with their meals, no matter what cabin you are flying. Whenever I get food on a plane, I always don’t expect a certain amount of taste due to the altitude. With that accounted for, some of the food still lacked taste on this one. The chicken sausages were good and cooked well but lacked much taste. The baked beans were alright and probably the highlight of the main course. The eggs were nice and somewhat fluffy and salted. The spinach was nicely steamed but the sauce that was doused all over it lacked much taste. The fruits on the side were fresh and delicious. I always enjoy a good croissant and butter, and the cream cheese and crackers were also great. Overall, this was not a bad meal, but there was certainly ways this could have been better made. The presentation was great, though the same can’t be said about quality.
There were mostly views for a while from this point onward.
Like my outbound flight from LAX to DXB, there was a mid-flight bar set up for all passengers. This consisted of various non-alcoholic drinks thought that was always available, fruits, and some unhealthy snacks. Not many airlines do this in economy class, so this is a very nice touch.
Here is a nice view from the back.
We were approaching the midway point of our flight by this time and any minute now I was expecting Emirates’ midflight pizza. However, they brought out the full lunch service.
This was a much better meal and more representative of what can and should be expected of Emirates. The salad was very fresh and tasty. A great salad it was indeed. As for the main course, the chicken was a little hard, but the peppercorn sauce was delicious and complemented the chicken very well. The mashed potatoes and green beans were also a tasty addition to the meal. The dessert cake with raspberry sauce was nice and tasty, but not the best economy class dessert I have ever had. Cheese and crackers are always appreciated by me, and the Italian breadsticks were a good way to soak up the remaining sauce. Overall, this was a great meal and definitely better than the first one, though I was still expecting this meal at the end of the flight and not in the middle.
By this time, we were pretty much crossing the North Pole and had ice sheets under us all over the place.
And above is a picture of actual ice sheets visible. The pictures don’t do as much justice as what it was like to see with naked eyes. I also had my binoculars which made the views even more spectacular.
Eventually, we crossed into Canada and as we approached the US-Canada border, we were served the final meal of the flight, the Emirates pizza.
I forgot to take a photo of the actual pizza itself, so here’s the raw clip that I used to make the YouTube video for this flight. This clip is quite lengthy because of the lovely views outside, but the time period of the focus on the meal is the 8th second through the 20th second of the video.
After that, I enjoyed the lovely views outside.
By this time, I was very tired as I had been awake the whole day before my 10PM flight from Mumbai: about 14 hours there. Then after a 3 hour flight to Dubai, which I did not sleep on at all, I was awake the whole 8 hour halt in Dubai, and the whole 14 hours of flight until now. That’s 39 hours no sleep. So I crashed for 2.5 hours all the way until we were already descending and below 20,000 feet.
We entered the standard pattern though there was a cloud cover over LAX so I had no good photos for that. Here is a photo of the LA skyline however.
Finally, we had a smooth on-time touchdown on runway 24R
As is always the case at LAX no matter what time of day, there is always interesting air traffic.
And here is an Alaska 737, the airline I will be crediting the miles from all my Emirates flights to.
And here is an Air New Zealand 777-200
Speaking of which, I will be heading to New Zealand more than likely in late 2018, so I plan to have some interesting routing to take us to Auckland without a single direct flight. If the timings work out, I shall try to squeeze in a review of LATAM’s 787 business class product.
But back to this flight, this was a great EK flight in economy class. The food was overall good, the crews were good on this sector, the views were good, the seats are wide and mostly comofortable, and the front of the A380 is always quiet. So this definitely was a great flight and I would not hesitate to fly EK economy again as it is one of the world’s best in my opinion. So this is the last review for this trip, so thanks for coming a long with me. This trip’s reviews were stretched over a period of months and I apologize for that, but time was very restricted for me when I returned from India on this flight that I could only post 1 other post besides this one between August 27th, 2017 (date of this flight) and November 11th, 2017 (the day I posted this review).
Even though there won’t be any flight reviews for a few months now, I will still be responding to emails, comments on my videos, and comments here on a daily basis, so please do not hesitate to ask anything or leave comments.
As for next year, there will be a lot of flight reviews, much much more than this year. I will probably have flights around the country, to Cabo San Lucas, to India as always in the summer (with an interesting routing I’m planning), and to Austrailia & New Zealand late next year. So 2018 has a lot in store for new flight reviews, so do be sure to stick around as there will be more premium cabin reviews next year and a few flatbed products more than likely. But in the meantime thanks for all your support and allowing this page, channel, and service to grow tremendously. I hope to be back very soon with more flight reviews. Cheers!