"Noise Pollution"
 

EK wants to have the F/Cl in the world -- and I have to say they are very close to it. I still love it, even doing about 6 F segments per month with them currently.

The only probelm I can see is the ongoing noise pollution during the flight. Only SQ makes more accouncements I think.

A great point for EK over SQ is that you can start the IFE as soon as you enter your suite. Then you are interrupted by zillions of commercials. why? I accept the words of the captain as this sometimes contains useful information, and of course a safety briefing has to be done.
But the ever same Dubai promo movie, the same commercial before each movie you watch, the languages spoken by the cabin crew, everything in three languages, and the ultra-long EK commercial about skywards, duty free and their charity organization? The charity usually is also announced another time before landing by PA, of course in three languages as well.

I pay a lot of money for flying in F, and I dont accept being the target of the commercials all the time. This is like if you buy a car, and each time you turn it on you have to see a movie about the great achievements of Dr Tang in his life and why then he should a customer of HSBC premier --

And about unuseful information: even most LH pursers have now learned that they can make announcements by service class and it is no need to tell the F class pax that he will receive a meal after they have already received a big menu card, or to tell them that the airline actually does have a frequent flyer program, an airshow or that they keep drinks for you in the galley during the entire flight.

EK is an airline that really cares about detail, and each time I fly them I am positively surprised about something. But it also looks they think that only a talking puser is a good purser and that the guests will spend all their money at EK duty free and EK charity if they only mention it often enough.

Any opinions, or any useful email address I can mail this to at EK?

You can skip the ads, just use the forward button.

As for telling F customers about the FFP, you'll be surprised how many are unaware.

Agree re the other points. One good thing is they dim the lights in F before the rest of the plane after take off.

this was just an example. but also about the FFP, 80% of the pax has some EK status, on some flights even 100%. if they find someone there on an F fare without an FF number, they should better have her/him approached by the captain personally to pull the person onto skywards :)

English, Arabic, and what's the third language?

My experience is that after takeoff there is very little interruption to the IFE unless an announcement is needed. The ads on the videos I just fast forward through

I tend not to use the IFE before takeoff due to the varous announcements that cause it to pause

Dave

It can be frustrating, especially if you are doing a lot of sectors over a short period of time. And you cant fast-forward the in-house promo, which is dual language (at least this one is shorter than the last one).

The only thing worse is UA. Try taking a flight ex SIN for NRT. You'll lose the will to live, as announcements are made in English, Mandarin and Japanese, with the Japanese translation taking an eternity...

I also noticed on a recent SQ flight that SQ appear to have relaxed their IFE rules and are starting it much, much sooner. They still wont let you plug in your own headphones for take-off/landing but it certainly appears to be a welcome change.

lots of announcements are in local language of the destination, depending on if they have a local flight attendant. it gets worse when the captain is a local for the destination country.

True. I had something like that getting off a Lufthansa F flight last year. Wanted to use the lounge at BLR on arrival, as I was in transit. Staff said it was for their FFs, till they saw my BP and got me to fill out a M&M sign up form. It was amusing to have them explain 'benefits' such as lounge access and free flights to me!

I had (I assume) Cantonese flying into HKG, then Thai when flying into BKK last week.

Ah, yes I remember. Since August '11 I have only flown between Dubai and JFK like five times. Only Arabic and English on those flights.

I think it depends a lot on whether there is a member of the cabin crew who speaks the local language. I've had flights to/ from BOM where no announcement was made in Hindi/ Marathi.

Why? As a Skywards Silver member they probably assumed that you can't be very used to receiving any benefits. :p

This was on Lufthansa, connecting to EK, which is why I needed to ask LH for lounge access. But Skywards members get a 'host of exciting benefits'!

Indeed. The "Opening Doors" benefit is especially exciting. It was the driving force to encourage me to become Skywards Gold.

You too!