My Birthday Flight to Nowhere: Part 2 – Emirates First Class

Breakfast in the Lounge

After a long journey to get to Dubai and resting a few hours in the quiet room. It was time to head to the lounge “restaurant” for some breakfast before my Emirates First Class flight. The eating area operates like a full service restaurant. It comes complete with wait staff and an a la carte menu to order off of.  I ordered a traditional breakfast, some fruit and an americano coffee to start my day. The food arrives pretty quickly and like everything else so far is very tasty! 

Lounge Gates

Soon after breakfast, boarding for my flight would commence. Normally, you would need to exit the lounge and make your way to the gate to get on the plane. Not for first class passengers in Dubai! Instead Emirates has chosen to build boarding gates directly into the First Class Lounge. Which, in my opinion, is pretty over the top. Even for a full first class cabin, these gates would service at most fifteen or so passengers each flight.  Once you get through, you take an elevator to the boarding level and board via a dedicated gate directly to the second floor of the plane. It’s kind of nuts because you never really “cross paths” with any other classes and so it feels very exclusive!

Emirates First Class

As I mentioned in the initial post for this trip, I am flying this plane three times. Instead of documenting each leg, I’m going to instead highlight the outstanding features and experiences from all three. Aside from the destinations and the crew, everything else is pretty similar.

The Cabin

The Emirates A380 First Class Cabin features individual “suites/pods” for each passenger. The suites themselves have doors that fully close inflight resulting in your own room in the air. Each suite has its own big screen entertainment system. While you can navigate the system by touchscreen, why reach when you can detach a tablet “remote” by your arm rest. The suite also has a lot of goodies like a snack basket and mini bar that opens and closes during take off and landing. 

When you want to catch a little shut eye, the seat will extend the full length of the suite making what is probably the biggest “bed in the air” I’ve experienced. There is also bedding provided to make it even more comfortable. This includes a comforter and a mattress pad. When you are ready to sleep, the flight attendants will set everything up for you so all you need to do is “crawl into bed”! There is ample space to roll around and get comfortable. There’s even small touches like little “stars” that glow on the roof of the cabin, so if you’re having trouble getting to sleep you can still stare up and feel like you’re under the night sky!

The Experience

One of the things that sets Emirates apart is its service. Upon getting comfortable in my seat, I’m offered a welcome beverage of champagne, a traditional Arabian coffee and a date to snack on. While the quality drinks and offerings are amazing, I do want to highlight the onboard staff. On all three of my flights, they are attentive, friendly and fun! Even though I’m sure they are used to all manner of clientele with varying degrees of expectations, they managed to add a lot of personality to my flight experience. I spent a lot of time chatting with the different crew members. They hail from all over the world and are very open to having a conversation with you.  Yet at the same time they all do their job so well, things were always clean and drinks are always topped up. It made first class feel less formal to me and I really appreciated that. They also do fun things like take polaroid photos as a keepsake reminder of the flight experience.

The Shower

The most unique thing about being aboard Emirates A380 First Class is the ability to shower in the air. Ever since reading about this experience, its been at the top of my aviation checklist. The Emirates A380 boasts two shower spa’s at the front of the first class cabin. After boarding, a flight attendant will come by and ask you to schedule your shower. Typically you either go at the beginning of the flight to be comfortable during the flight. Or before landing so you can deplane feeling refreshed. 

When it comes time for you to shower, the attendant introduces the shower spa to you. Every passenger only gets five minutes of hot water (though it’s heavily hinted that if you really needed more, it’s available). Emirates also includes a set of pajamas for each passenger, which are super comfortable and great to spend the rest of the flight in. At the end of every shower, when you return to your suite, there is a small fruit plate with a honey dip waiting for you. 

What can I say, this is an experience! For me personally, its so over the top and I couldn’t help but giggle with joy the first time I hopped into that shower. By the third shower/flight I still had a silly smile on my face as I did this once in a life time thing.

The Food

You can’t really talk about First Class without talking about the food offerings. Traditional airlines tend to do a meal service. However, with Emirates First, they do anytime dining. This means that whenever the urge strikes, you can order off the menu and they will prepare and bring it out to you. Over the course of three flights, I feel I made a valiant effort to “eat my way” through the menu. However, there’s only so much one can eat in a compressed amount of time!

Some of the standouts:

The Bar

One of the other standout features on the Emirates A380 is the onboard lounge. It’s a bar and social space behind the business class cabin. Like many things in this experience, this is unlike any other flight I have been on. Shortly after take off the crew setup this bar as a place that business and first class passengers can congregate, grab a drink and hang out. It’s conceivable that you can spend a majority of your flight here, and over the course of my three flights I did spend a fair amount of time here. Not only do you get that experience of lounging at 30000 feet, you also meet some interesting people. I got to some cool fellow travellers and also chat up the bartender too who has some great stories to tell about past flight experiences. 

While the bar is intended for business and first class passengers, there is another “bar” at the front of the first class cabin. This is exclusively for first class passengers and has “fancier” drinks available. However, it’s a smaller space and not many people congregate there. I think, if you simply want to grab a drink, you can do so here. But, if you want to be at a “bar in the sky” the business class bar is the way to go.

The Layover in Zurich

While the focus of my trip is the first class flight, I did want to mention my short layover in Zurich. It’s an interesting experience getting off the plane, making a U-turn at security and heading back to the same plane you just left. I had short layover in Zurich and since I’ve been here before, I spent most of my time looking out the window spotting planes as they landed and took off.

Homeward Bound from Toronto

Before I knew it, my three Emirates First class flights had come and gone. My last flight landing in Toronto, I had one final flight home to Vancouver on Air Canada. I took advantage of some great sunset views of the apron before flying  home. The whirlwind past few days meant I passed out when I got onboard and soon found myself home in Vancouver.

Final Thoughts

Because, this was such a short trip, I’m going to forgo a formal wrap up like I normally do. There was a “larger” trip that I originally planned to do in conjunction with these flights. However, Covid was still a thing and even though there was some anxiousness I’m glad I did it. I do regret cutting all of the trip and in retrospect probably could have gone ahead with some parts of it. But hindsight is 20/20 and at the time my priority were these flights. 

The obvious highlight of the trip is flying in arguably the world’s best first class. The experience is so over the top and has probably ruined me for all plane travel in the future. I am very thankful, that I had the opportunity to do it and check it off the list. Unique experiences like showering and being at a bar at 30000 feet are once in a lifetime memories. I feel blessed to be able to have these experiences and am also thankful everything went so smoothly. With travel once again looking optimistic in 2022, hopefully, I’m not just taking trips for the sake of flying!

I tried to put a few of the clips I managed to snag together into a short video. Hopefully it adds a bit more context to the flight!