I departed Syracuse, New York on Janury 6th for the first leg of my trip to JFK.  Minus a super hard landing, the flight was super smooth.  I made a few phone calls while at JFK and then was surprised to see the outfits that my crew would be wearing. Sweet outfits, eh?  I didn’t take this picture nor is this the actual crew, btw.

I highly recommend flying Emirates.

Emirates gives you a free hotel room when you have a layover between 8-24 hours but the thing you must do is ask for it while checking in.  They will not let you book it at the terminal.  I made this mistake and needed to go all the way back out through security, make the reservation, and then back through security again.  The person making a reservation ahead of me was Tommy Hilfiger.  No joke.  The Emirates employees said he was a kind, friendly, mellow guy — important traits to hold onto when you’re as successful as he is.

I have flown internationally before (Mexico, Costa Rica, and Panama) but never experienced anything like the Emirates flight.  The minute you walk onto the plane there’s this uplifting, ambient music playing with a woman’s vocals that roll up and down as if moving through a valley.  It presented a good feeling given the fact that I was about to be sitting in 1 place for 12 hours.  The crew reminded me of Jetblue’s crews; kind, friendly, funny, and down-to-earth, phenomenal.

The only thing I would caution is the food.  I had two meals while on the plane, first dinner and later breakfast, and it gave my stomach a very tough time.  After the meals were served there would literally be waiting lines for the bathrooms.  I’m not sure if it’s always like this or if we simply had a not-so-great batch of food.

The temperature was excellent, there were many tv and movie options, and the seats were larger than any I have ever sat in on an airplane.  And I was flying economy class.  I booked my flight about 14 days before I left and the cost was $1,600 USD round trip; a great price, in my opinion.  I waited awhile to book it because I wasn’t too sure when I wanted to depart and return, and because gasoline prices continued to decline along with our economy.

We departed a little behind schedule because the plane needed to be heavily de-iced.  We flew at approx. 41,000 feet above sea level and our top air speed was approx. 570mph.  It was the highest and fastest I have ever flown.  I also had the pleasure of flying on the world’s largest passenger airplane, an Airbus A-380.  While in JFK a girl next to me remarked that she had waited 12 hours versus taking a sooner plane just so she could fly on the A-380.  Apparently she’s into airplanes.

Time to catch a plane to Uganda.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 7th, 2009 at 8:17 pm and is filed under Journal in Africa, Posts with pictures. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.