Emirates Airline Review (Economy Class)

As you may know from our previous posts, Heesun and I ended up buying a trip to Dubai around November 2015 for $650 RT (from San Francisco, California). We flew Economy Class with Emirates Airlines, and though I didn’t think much of it when I booked it, a lot of friends reacted with surprise. “You’re flying with Emirates? That’s like the Four Seasons of airlines!”

I didn’t realize it was such a big deal. After hearing more about the airlines, I decided to look up more information about Emirates. I found out their first class flights were legit. I mean, LEGIT. They have blinged out seats/mini beds, pretentious foods like caviar, a bar on your floor, and get this – a SHOWER with a shower attendant to serve your needs.

Emirates First Class…I will fly you someday…

Okay, so Economy Class was not like First Class. But it ended up having its unique pluses, so I took a few pictures to show you what the flight was like.

Emirates Airline Review (Economy Class)

Space/Comfort

The flight was quite spacious, and seats were comfortable:

Here are my friends playing Super Smash Brothers on the go…I quickly realized that the middle aisle seats situated near the front had huge amounts of leg room. And instead of having screens right in front of your face, their screens were conveniently on their right hand sides.

WiFi

WiFi was free for the first 10 MB. You end up using it quite quickly, but you can pay $1 for every 500 MB afterwards. That is extremely cheap! The WiFi, however, is admittedly really slow.  I ended up just using the 10 MB and not paying for WiFi afterwards. Since there were so many movies onboard, I didn’t really need it.

Temperature

For some reason the return flight was EXTREMELY cold. It was painfully cold in the beginning where a bunch of people started complaining, so they fixed the situation (slightly). It was still cold. I suppose all flights are generally chilly so just make sure to wrap up.

Amenities

Emirates has a HUGE movie selection! Essentially I didn’t need to bring music or other distractions for the flight. They had around 500 movies, tons of categories, and a lot of movies were recent. I ended up watching movies throughout both of my flights.

If you forget any of your flight essentials, don’t worry. Emirates has you covered with this cute bag consisting of 1 eye mask, 1 toothpaste & toothbrush, and 1 pair of long socks.

And of course they have a blanket, pillow, and headphones like most other airlines. At the start of the flight, they give you a warm handcloth to wipe your hands with which was nice 🙂

Meals

Meal time! Check out the menu (sorry for the blurriness).

Little snacks included:

Mini tic tacs! So cute

I accidentally deleted some of the photos off my phone, so here is a Wikipedia, labeled for reuse, photo of the meals. As you can see their presentation is a bit nicer than that of the average Economy Class meal. The food was actually pretty good. I ended up getting their curry, meat, and rice type meals.

Also, there’s free alcohol served on the flight! So I ended up getting three mini Jack Daniels bottles and saving one of them for my adventures in Dubai, haha.

Service

I didn’t creepily take pictures of the flight attendants, so here is another Wikipedia, labeled for reuse, photo of the flight attendants. As you can see they wear beautiful, classy attire that distinguishes themselves from other airlines. My coworker was raving about the Emirates flight attendants so I had high expectations.

However, I had mixed experiences with the service on my flights. The flight attendant kept forgetting my requests and almost looked annoyed when I had to ask for the same thing again and again. But honestly, this seems common across airlines so I can’t hate. And the attendant for my return flight was very nice.

Overall Experience

I think USA airlines have a lot of catching up to do. I like that Emirates includes a lot of amenities to make your experience more enjoyable. When you’re stuck on an extremely long flight you’re going to want things like complimentary toothbrushes, toothpaste, eye masks, alcohol, and 500 movies onboard. It’s the little things that matter! Even though I had little complaints here and there with the temperature, WiFi, and service, it was still a positive flight experience. I have extreme insomnia so I had trouble sleeping, but that’s not on the airlines. I recommend trying out Emirates – and I hope that one day I’ll be able to fly their First Class flights ;).