Fourth and final leg on this trip - my review of Emirates B777-300ER economy class, Dubai to Stockholm
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01. Trip report introduction
02. Emirates B777 economy class, Stockholm to Dubai
03. Emirates A380 economy class, Dubai to Mauritius
04. Friday Attitude Hotel, Trou d'Eau Douce
05. What Mauritius was like
06. Emirates A380 economy class, Mauritius to Dubai
07. Emirates B777 economy class, Dubai to Stockholm
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| Dubai (DXB) to Stockholm (ARN) |
Date: 2018-07-16
Flight number: EK157
Aircraft: Boeing 777-300ER
Registration: A6-ENZ
Age of aircraft: 3 years
Duration of flight: 6:12 (gate to gate)
Seat: 32K (economy class)
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| Seat map with my seat (32K) in red. Courtesy of Seatguru.com |
OK, it's time for the fourth and last leg of our Mauritius trip - heading back home to Stockholm from Dubai. I mentioned in the previous post that this flight was parked at a remote gate, but first things first... you might recall from this post that Emirates offered free ice cream at DXB during this summer... I had another "Arabic coffee with dates" ice cream - so delicious! And as we walked through the terminal towards our waiting area, we passed another ice cream cart, so I tried the lemon sorbet as well. Not as good, but still a nice breakfast ;)
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| My prrrrecious! |
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| So delicious, but kind of small - it would be OK to get another one, right? |
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| Of course it would! No matter how full I am, there's always room for ice cream in my belly! |
DXB is quite spread out, and you might very well have to take a train between their different terminals. Because of this, I find it so surprising that they still need to have so many planes park at remote stands. We had gate C46 for our departure this morning, and it was located in a faraway part of DXB where there were a lot of construction works going on. Toilets were few and far between, there were not that many seats (partly because people were sleeping and taking up several seats each) and it was kind of hot and smelled of feet and body odour. And I'm not a DXB fan to begin with...
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| The airport may look cool, but looks can be deceiving... |
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| Father and son taking up five seats, shoes removed. Is this cute or annoying? Can't really decide... |
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| I know that there are other airlines serving DXB, but I honestly don't think I've ever seen aircraft from other airlines parked here... |
We were asked to board in zones, but people didn't seem to care about that. What really annoyed me however, was that the gate agents didn't care that people didn't care. They let anyone board, despite being in zones not called yet. Their laissez-faire attitude was certainly unbecoming for Emirates, but then again, I'm realising more and more that their reputation is greatly exaggerated. The bus to the remote stand took 14 minutes, which was slightly faster than when we landed in Dubai after our flight from Stockholm.
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| The long walk to the bus... |
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| Still walking... |
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| I love flags, so any livery containing flags is a good livery in my book! |
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| Alright! Time for the final flight of this trip! |
We had chosen the exact same seats as on the flight between Stockholm and Dubai, and since they proved good on that flight, we had no reason to change the seats upon checking in for the return flight. This was however a much newer aircraft, so it was more pleasant (and the IFE screens were a lot bigger).
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| And we're back at row 32! |
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| 32K, mine for this hop up to Stockholm! |
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| Not A380 big (right?), but a lot bigger than on the older 777s |
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| Waiting for boarding to be completed |
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| These seats had USB ports |
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| Leg room was good (as usual on Emirates) |
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| Well hello there! This is the exact same aircraft that took us to Mauritius 10 days earlier! What are the odds? About one in one hundred... |
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| There's actually a plane from Rwandair parked there! |
We took off from runway 30R approximately 30 minutes behind schedule (although pushback was only about ten minutes late), and soon climbed out of the Dubai haze.
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| Climbing out of the Dubai haze |
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| There's actually some blue sky above the haze! |
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| Browsing the food selection for this flight |
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| Both breakfast and lunch were delicious |
Breakfast was served fairly quick after take off, and it was fresh and tasty. This time they had apple juice, so I naturally took a glass of that, as well as a cup of coffee, although just like on the ARN-DXB leg, it was more likely instant coffee. I can't complain about the views that came with the coffee though, as we cruised over Iran.
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| Delicious breakfast! |
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| Apple juice! |
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| Somewhere over Iran |
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| "Coffee" |
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| Coffee with a view, eh? |
I was extremely tired during this flight, so I didn't watch any movie or listen to any music. The only thing I used the inflight entertainment system for was the moving map, and one thing that annoys me is that Emirates throw in so much ads (for themselves).
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| So right now were cruising over... hang on a minute, we'll get back to the moving map after a couple of ads... |
Despite being so tired, skipping trip reporting during this flight was not an option. As it turns out, I'm even able to trip report in my sleep. Don't believe me? Take a look at this... I managed to visit the lavatory to get pictures for this blog in my sleep...
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| Trip reporting in my sleep... |
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| See! I told you I was sleeping! |
I'm not sure what time it was when they started the lunch service, but I'm guessing about an hour before they started the descent towards ARN. I may have been too tired to write the time down, but I still took pictures of the food! It was a good meal, so the last impressions that Emirates made on this trip were quite good.
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| om nom nom |
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| Sweet potato and bean salad |
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| Fish with garlic and chili |
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| Strawberry yoghurt mousse |
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| The lunch views were just as good as the breakfast views... And yes, the new background to the blog was taken at this moment! |
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| Not far to go now! |
We landed on runway 01R, and after a short taxi, we were at our gate. By this time, we were more than ready to get our bags and head home. Too bad it was only 2pm and I would have to try to stay awake for six-seven more hours before going to bed...
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| Touchdown! Welcome to Stockholm Arlanda! |
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| An SAS bird taking off as we're taxiing to our gate |
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| Almost parked now |
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| Thanks for this ride, A6-ENZ! |
Passport control took 18 minutes. Not that we were in a hurry. Our bags didn't arrive on the carousel until 49 minutes after our plane had arrived at the gate. Way to go, ARN! I actually think Arlanda is a pretty good airport most of the time, but arriving here with checked luggage is a nightmare nine times out of ten...
My parents picked us up in their car (thank you!!), and soon we were home and (after trying to stay awake for some hours) able to catch up on some much needed sleep. This had been a great trip. Mauritius was really relaxing, and the flights were quite good as well. (I know I've been criticising Emirates quite a lot in these posts, but that's only because they think so highly of themselves, whereas I do see them as a hit-and-miss airline.)
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