Any advice for a first timer
 

Hi, I am a lone female traveller and would welcome any advice no matter how small as I havent flown long haul before.

I fly from NCL to DBX on 6th Feb then on to AKL the following day.. I have booked the comp hotel room as there is a 10 hour transit wait in DBX. I have booked economy class as I couldnt afford business class, but I would like to know if its possible just to upgrade part of the journey.. I've flown to Dubai before and coped with the 7 hours, but the thought of 14 plus hours with my knees squashed against the seat in front is not appealing ( I am 5'10", with very long legs) There were no extra leg room seats left, but I have reserved aisle seats so that I can stick my legs out.
I'm assuming that I will be able to check my baggage in all the way through, but am not sure of the procedure through DBX. I have been looking at the meet and greet service in DBX and wondered if anyone has experience of this..
I have joined skywards and will be earning 25000 miles on this trip. Will I be able to use any of these miles on the return leg? (I travel back on 20th Feb).
Am I to understand that there are different classes of tickets even within economy, I keep reading things about Y J F and K.. its a bit confusing (and no i'm not blonde! :p)

Hopefully someone will take pity on me and offer some useful advice as I am starting to get quite apprehensive about it all.. feel free to message me if you woulld rather not reply on here.

Kind regards

PP

Try and get to the airport early (3 hours+) and ask if there is any possibilty of an exit row seat. These are held back till check in begins and handed out on a first come first serve basis. They will have all the leg room you'll ever need.

Thanks Yanny, I assumed because they were unavailable that they had already been taken. So I take it its better to check in at the airport than online?

I guess that the 25K miles is for the whole trip, you will only get the miles for the outbound flight which you can use later for the return flight, check how many miles is needed for an upgrade, if you got that then go ahead and upgrade to Biz :).


And yes it's always better to check-in at the airport, just book a seat that you think it's good for you and then upon checking in at the airport ask for an exit row seat, if they are taken then go ahead with the one you have booked. On Manage My Booking the exit row seats are always unavailable, you can only book it at the airport.


Hope you have a nice trip and enjoy.

Transit it simple at DXB and you don't need the Marhaba service. Baggage will be checked through and you won't see it till your final destination. There's always people around DXB to help direct you, so you can easily find your way to the hotel shuttle (someone else should be along shortly to give you more details on that).

While you'll get about half the miles after the entire outbound, that's not enough to upgrade a DXB-NCL (25000 miles). You could do AKL-SYD for 12500 but it's a waste for a 3 hr flight.

Yes, there are different classes - Y is economy, J is Business and F is First, however each of these cabins has different fare buckets where y/j/f are the highest ones - so economy has YERWQKHB etc.

Online check in vs. airport doesn't make a difference. You need to go to the counter while checking in bags and ask for the exit row seat.

Hey you're welcome. No need for the apprehension, s'probably just a little fear of the unknown, i'm sure you'll find your trip a fun experience.

Top tip - buy food and drink in the airport to supplement the meagre offerings in economy. They never seem to bring what you want when you want it.;)

Hi there,
I recently flew long haul for the first time on my own, even tho I am a frequent flyer I was slightly nervous about who would be sitting next to me. Some FTers may remember my earlier posts! Most of the advise was to just get hammered and sleep through it!

To be fair I flew business but the advise from the previous posts holds. Check in early, talk to the person at the check in desk (helps if you have EK status) and ask who is sitting next to you, I asked if they could switch my seat to enable me to sit next to a lady on the overnight leg of my flight.

When I was in the lounge the check in chap came over and upgraded me to first.

If you are polite, and don't request the upgrade, and simply ask to be seated next to another lady, they usually accomodate you.

Interesting, I was also upgraded on the return flight on check in.

Emirates are really good with lone females and I have just booked my second trip on my own because if they can help they usually do.

:cool:Best of luck

You will be Ok from Newcastle to Dubai, All my memories from Past travel on the route was the amount of Booze been served ^ Mind you , A couple of bottles of wine and i am a sleep.

Malc

Thanks folks for the advice so far.. I guess it is just a fear of the unknown. I'm sure I'll be fine, after all if I can raise 4 children whats half a day on an airplane! :p

Any other tips and advice gratefully received

PP :D

Friendly advice
 

If you have a long stopover in Dubai (over eight hours) you get a free stay at the Millenium hotel. This is how it works. On landing in Dubai, and before leaving the airport, stop by at the emirates help desk. Show them the voucher you have from Emirates for your hotel stay and visa. (If your travel agent has not given you this voucher with your ticket then make sure you collect it from Emirates when you check in). The help desk will see the voucher and stamp it and send you to the bank. This might sound confusing and first timers might think there is something to pay but there is nothing to pay. You just go to the bank counter as directed and they will give you a stamp on the voucher. From there you have to go for a security iris scan. Get in line for that (women and men have separate queues) and finish the iris scan. After this you are on your way out.

As you exit the passenger area it might seem confusing as to where to go for the free hotel pick up bus. Just ask and somebody will tell you. Go to the hotel pick up desk and they will take care of you from there. You will be asked to be seated and wait till the hotel bus arrives. Usually maximum wait is about twenty minutes. When the bus arrives you will be guided to the bus and the bus will drop you off at the hotel. Check in is quick and simple. At the check in you will be given free cupons for meals at the buffet which is very good. If you want to buy anything else just step out of the hotel and cross the street for a supermarket. The return trip is also free with the hotel bus which runs every fifteen minutes. There is an emirates desk at the hotel in case you want to re-check anything. Also there is a three hour sightseeing tour of Dubai for about thirty dollars which is worth taking if you feel like it.

Your check in luggage should be booked through to the final destination. Do not take it out at Dubai and make sure that at check in you specify that it goes on to your final destination. Just go to the hotel with your carry on.

The Marhaba meet and greet service is there but its really not necessary as everything is very smooth and all you have to do is follow instructions from stage to stage.

On the flight itself - if you have a 14 hr flight you might want to take some snacks along just in case you feel nippy. You will get a meal at the beginning of the flight and one at the end. Depends on whether you feel you can last some ten hours inbetween with nothing to eat except free juice and water in the galley. No small snacks. Some people can and some cant. If you are the kind who can, in a normal day, have breakfast in the morning and dinner at night with no lunch and nothing inbetween then you will have no problem. Otherwise take a snack bag with you.

I think for most of the out stations, checkin opens exactly 3 hours before scheduled departure time (at least I remember that for Germany and Tokyo), so that's the time you should be aiming for. :)

I'd be careful with such generalization since it can create confusion. The stopover program is only eligible for pax with more than 8h stopover on the first available connection. If there is a short-transit connection, pax won't get the hotel. Plus to create more confusion, only certain fare buckets (I think only in Y) allow this.

We had lengthy discussions in the forum, about the fare buckets (some of them can be seen and identified on some local websites, some now) etc. The only way to find it out is to call EK. But then again, there were cases in which different call centers would give different answers (if I recall correctly).

This STPC program (this is how it is called) is one of the blurry areas of EK.

stopovers Dubai
 

The Emirates website can clarify this matter. Link

http://www.emirates.com/english/plan...stopovers.aspx

Quote from website

As a special courtesy to our passengers, in certain cases where an itinerary calls for a long stopover in Dubai, Emirates will cover accommodation, meals and ground transportation costs.

This service is offered to:
Economy Class passengers
If the booking class for the entire outbound or inbound leg of their journey is N, M, E, W, R or Y.
If the connection time until the first available flight is more than 8 hours and less than 24 hours.

First Class and Business Class passengers
If the booking class for the entire outbound or inbound leg of their journey is J, D, C, I, O, F, P, Z or A.
If the connection time until the first available flight is more than 6 hours and less than 24 hours.

Long stopover expenses may also be covered in other cases, such as Skywards redemption bookings, and other rules may apply.

If you dont get any good seats, I find that the seats in red (toward the back of the plane) are good for sticking out your leg along the aisle.

There is slightly more room that wont get in the way of the trolley carts.
Then again may also get a chance of an empty row towards the back of the plane where you can lift up the armrest to lie across the seats. EK armrests can be lifted up to lie across comfortably (for both B777s & A380)

For the B777 config:
xxx xxxx xxx
xxx xxxx xxx
xx_ xxxx _xx
xx _xxxx _xx


Also for your Y flights you can consider selecting your meal for each flight online. I usually start to get hungry once I smell the food being prepared. And booking a meal gets you your food first before everyone else.

I generally choose the seafood meal which could be one of the meals already offered, but with a slightly different side dish. However if you choose the Muslim meal, you'll get it at the same time as the others, as the food offered should already be Halal.

Once you finish your food you can use the lavatory before everyone starts to queue up for it. So it's a double plus

i used to do this, but recently the standard meals have been better so i stopped, also, many people on this forum claim that pre-selecting a meal harms your chances of a free upgrade. like for example, they seem to just serve all the special meal orders a rubbish cucumber and lettuce sandwich (the vege option) even if your special meal isnt a vege option for the "light snack" meal on flights while others get a chicken or tuna sandwich.

I dont want to go off-topic here but I can assure you the anecdotal evidence I have for op-ups being affected by meal pre-selection is unfounded. If you're Gold, meal preselection shouldn't hurt. The FA's simply said to me "do you want your X meal from Y brought up?"

hmm...thats nice to know. Has it happened several times? The fact they've started giving the vegetarian option to all special meal orders for the "light meal" is annoying though. A roll with lettuce and two slices of cucumber is a joke!

Also i've noticed for the main meals the special meals lack some of the stuff the normal meals get, like the piece of chocolate and other minor things.

The piece of chocolate is gone from the regular meals too. Noticed this last week. They did have anytime cup noodles which I don't remember having seen before.

The problem is that those classes vary depending on where you fly from, fare buckets offered from various points on the network vary, and that there is no way to know your fare bucket without using something like expertflyer.

Thanks folks... as per original post I have got the complimentary stayover in DXB... apparently flights from NCL to AKL are all eligible ... and the advice given as to what and where to go once I get to Dubai is very gratefully received. I had been thinking of going into Dubai for a few hours, but I dont land until 12.30 am, and as much as the thought of a cocktail or two in Barasti appeals I think I will be better off getting a good nights sleep before the long journey the following day.

As for the food, I eat everything and anything, but I certainly wont be able to go 10 hours without anything, so large snack bag it is! :D

So at the moment my plan is

* Check in online 24 hrs prior and try for exit seats

*Get to the airport 3 hours prior, and try again for exits seats if unsuccesful online ( at least I will be able to make good use of my lounge pass.. courtesy of my bank)

*Enjoy the comfort of the hotel in DXB

*Board to AKL via BNE nicely rested and just enjoy!

For all you FF out there you probably think I am fussing over nothing, but I like to have things clear cut.. But really looking forward to it, 2 weeks today I wll be on my way to NCL ready for my epic journey :cool:

Thanks again for all the advice, and I forgive those "going off topic" as at least it brought the post back up :D

PP xx

PP

I'm looking at your NCL-DXB flight on ExpertFlyer, and while not totally accurate, it is somewhat representative of the load.

One alternative strategy you could employ (and I have done this multiple times) is request a row in the middle towards the very back of the cabin. There is logic in my madness. Most frequent travellers hate the back of the cabin but if you can snag a centre row of 4-seats, you sit like this:

D E F G
X X X X

You sit in E and then you put your laptop bag in G (with the seat belt thru the handles)

When you check in at NCL or DXB, ask the check-in agent how full the flight is (also keep watching the seat map on EK.com and ExpertFlyer).

If he/she tells you the flight is not full, ask for a row towards the very back (or pre-select a seat via the seat map function on MYB).

That way, you end up with the entire row for the whole flight. I've never once had someone try and sit in the row. I reckon you can nearly have as comfortable a sleep lying across 4 seats in Y as in J (I said "nearly").

The load on the A380 flight the next day looks quite full, and I couldn't tell from your post which flights you were on out of DXB to NZ.

Good luck.

See how you go...

one of those U shaped neck pillows is also really useful for long haul flights. i have an inflatable one for easy storage, and also the inflatable ones tend to be firmer and give more support to your neck than the stuffed ones.

i never knew how much difference it would make until my cousin passed me one during a flight!

definitely a good comfort item for flights above 6 hours.

Thanks Eightblack... As far as I can make out its a 777-330ER not the A380 im flying DBX - AKL, my flight number is EK434 and departs 10.35am

I'll certainly consider the sitting at the back idea.

I employ this strategy religiously.

However I did once have a grumpy old guy brazenly sit on my legs on an MH flight. About 2 hours in, he decided he wanted more space, went for a wander, and saw me lying there. We made eye contact, and he just stood there staring, presumably hoping I would volunter to sit up. I closed my eyes, as I had been up for some 30 hours and was trying to fall asleep. Next thing I knew, he sat down on my legs. As you can imagine, I was really surprised.

It's hard to know what to do in a case like that. If he had asked nicely, I would have shared the space. I didn't want to start a big fight, because that's just hassle the flight crew doesn't need, and even if you think you have "justice" on your side, you never know how the authorities will see it.

I settled for the somewhat ridiculous passive-aggressive approach of taking off my socks and "accidentally" massaging his lap with my toes every time I shifted positions, until he gave up half an hour later. As a grown man in my 40s, I felt really childish at the time, but it was strangely satisfying too!

I recently flew JFK - DXB - SIN just 2 weeks ago with seafood meal selection and I remember having the chocolate. Shame they removed it.
I did like the cup noodle option as it was a 'request anytime throughout the flight' selection. But I did not try it though.


I thought you can't make seat amendments on the day of the flight itself?
I remember trying to check the seating arrangements a few hours before my flight but the system would only show my following flight. So now I make any last minute changes the night before.


That is seriously creepy! I would have been really annoyed, especially since I'm really irritable whenever I'm awoken from my sleep abruptly.
But better to feel childish than to relinquish your precious space! ;)

You can select a seat online during online check in which is upto an hour or so before the flight. Sometimes when the flight is full though, they won't let you do this.

I am with you in trying to get a seat row, this is my tactic as well. However, frankly, we have to admit that nor have we actually bought the seat(s) nor do we have any other right such as "first come first serve" to occupy space.

Imagine he comes from a seat which is occupied with a neighboring seat while you are having the seat row with four seats for yourself. Each one could take the outer seat leaving one seat free next to you. Albeit you will not able to lie flat, this is just fair.

What I can see is that he behavior is very weird, in fact childish. But at the same time, you have no right so occupy the row (unless you paid for it) :)

+1 ..

Done this many times on the LH A343 and old LH744 and it works many a times.. sometimes i also just do a cursory walk on the plane to see which middle rows r completely empty and just go there and sit as soon as I see the flight gates close ;):o