They say all planes are created equal, but I don’t think so. We flew here on an Emirates Boeing 777. I’ve always been curious about what that feels like compared to the A380. After having been stuck on this particular Boeing, I’ve decided that I prefer the A380. I prefer its cabin air quality.

It’s my first time flying on Emirates. They were the first airline that I noticed promoting their economy class as being something beyond ordinary. For example, there’s free wifi for everyone, although in the small print you see that’s limited to 20mb for the whole flight. I bought the 500mb package for US$16 and managed to do a bit of work. Annoyingly the signal dropped out once we left mainland Australia and things didn’t recover until we neared the middle-east. More than a little irritating to think you have something, and then when you get used to things, it all breaks down.

The TV system was great, although the controls seemed a bit unintuitive. But how do you report that the audio on seats 27A and 29A doesn’t work? Who knows… maybe those seats are destined to be broken for the forseeable future.

Landing in Dubai, we were out in the middle of the airfield and had to walk down steps for a 15 minute bus ride to the terminal building. It suprised me a bit. Although it was initially a novelty to be outside a heavy aircraft, the ride was uncomfortable and unwelcome for the time of day. It was midnight local time, 7am Sydney time. I thought Dubai was a world class airport but this part certainly wasn’t. At least it was night and I knew we could sleep when we got to our room.