Home > Emirates > 2004 > Review

Taken March 2004 from London, Gatwick - LGW to Bangkok - BKK

I was really looking forward to flying Emirates after the awards it has won, but have ended up quite disappointed. Having flown Malaysia Airlines business class to Australia last year I can say that Emirates appear to be resting on their laurels, and there is no comparison between the two. Malaysia wins hands down. The first leg from Gatwick to Dubai was on a brand new Airbus 340-500.This is the way Business class should be. The other of the 3 legs were on 777,s and Airbus 330,s.They are not of the same quality and very disappointing. The in-flight entertainment was very poor with no video on demand. This should be a must when paying business class prices. The food was reasonable, but not brilliant.

Probably the most annoying part about the whole experience was the lounges on offer. At Gatwick one had the use of the Delta Airlines Lounge. There was no hot food on offer, only a poor selection of sandwiches, nuts and crisps. Not acceptable!. At Dubai, the so called world class lounge resembled a half way house, with people lying on chairs with their shoes off, in various states of consciousness meaning that myself and my wife could not sit down. This is clearly not what I expected.

All in all I feel that Emirates has a long way to go if it wants to win any more awards, because my opinion now is that radical improvements must be made, and quickly

One other point, I thought the staff were very friendly and the vast spread of languages spoken by them is an excellent idea.