I arrived home on Thursday 1 March in the early morning – I disembarked from the airplane at about 7:20, at Manchester airport. Readers, that was a shock. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Manchester airport look welcoming but that morning it was especially not so. The previous day I had been in Kuala Lumpur in temperatures a bit above 32°C, and in Manchester it was somewhere below 32°F; and unfortunately I was mainly dressed for Kuala Lumpur. But I had a plan – a heavier pair of trousers was at the top of my case, along with a jacket and a waterproof, so I repaired to the gents loo and (with a bit of a struggle) changed. Then I had time for a cup of tea in the Arrivals hall before heading off to the airport station for my train home.
I was just about to go down to the platform when I got a call from Val, who told me that Customer Information at the airport had called her to say that my passport had been found – I had obviously dropped it at some time in the previous half-hour. So I rushed back to customer information, identified myself, and was reunited with my passport. One lesson to draw from that experience is that it is a very good idea to fill in the ‘Emergencies’ page at the back of your passport – that way, if your mislaid passport is found, the finder has someone to call…. Then I charged back to the station just in time to get on my train.
Have I mentioned the snow yet? It turned out that it had been snowing on and off for a day or so in the UK, a fact of which I had been largely unaware. It was therefore all a bit of a shock when I got to look at it. Worse still, on arrival home (by which time I’d been travelling for nearly 24 hours) I learned that Val was already on her way home and that I therefore couldn’t wait until I’d had some sleep before clearing the drive. So the first thing I did, just about, was get the snow shovel out and clear the drive and the access from the road so she would be able to park without problems.
The actual flights from KL were quite hard. Being westbound they were longer than the eastbound flights out, so took nearer to eight hours each rather than seven. The flight from KL wasn’t until after 7pm; then I had about four hours’ wait at Dubai International; then another eight hours to Manchester. They dimmed the lights for both flights so I was able to get some sleep, but it was sporadic. The flight from KL to Dubai was only half full, and I had a window row of three seats to myself so I was able to spread out a bit, but the flight from Dubai to Manchester was full and therefore less comfortable. I find it interesting that Dubai is now the third-most popular destination from Manchester, with over 900,000 passengers in 2017. (The two most popular are Amsterdam and Dublin with just over 1m, and 950k, respectively.) I doubt if many passengers are staying in Dubai; most, like me, will be going on from there to other destinations in south Asia. Justification for the Hub & Spoke model, or at least Emirates’ version of it.
Going back to the flights, I remain impressed with the standards of service on Emirates. The food is better than it has any right to be – all of the meals I had were palatable and a couple were very tasty indeed. You get metal cutlery, and (if you want it) free alcohol. Then there’s the entertainment. I had downloaded some films onto my iPad and watched them, but on the Emirates ICE system I watched Blade Runner 2049 and a couple of episodes of the second series of Lucifer. It’s a good system, as long as the headphones work! I had popped a Lightning cable into my carry-on bag to try to charge my iPhone and iPad via a USB socket, but I found this didn’t work; I should have put an adaptor plug in as well (the Emirates seat-backs take UK-style plugs.) The economy seats are comfortable and the aircraft is quiet. During the holiday I flew from Singapore to KL on a new-ish Boeing 737, and I was struck by how much noisier that was than the A380. Finally, I had window seats for each flight. I paid for the two seats on the way out but didn’t actually need to have done so for the second flight as the plane was about half empty. On the way back I checked in pretty much as soon as I could and found I had been assigned two window seats again. Finally, it should be noted that row 41, the front row in the E block, does not have a window! I was in row 42 and had one, but the people in front of me did not. They did have extra legroom, as the forward main exit is in from of that row. (Note that this advice applies to what seat guru.com terms the ‘A380-800 Two Class‘ version, which is what Emirates use on the Manchester service.)
Leave a Reply