Review of Emirates flight Dubai → Johannesburg in Economy

Welcome to the second FR in my SA trip!

Background Infromation

This december I visted South Africa to visit my familly there (I'm half South African). We had two options for our flights, SAA via DKR and IAD (JFK and Accra on the way to JNB), or EK via DXB. We (for obvious reasons) went with EK. The main selling point for me was probably the A380. Anyways, here's my routing:

EK226 SFO-DXB in Y ………. http://flight-report.com/en/report-12750.html
EK767 DXB-JNB in Y ………. THIS REPORT
SA1521 JNB-GRJ in Y………. Flight Report Coming Soon!
FA121 GRJ-CPT in Y ………. http://flight-report.com/en/report-13026.html
SA332 CPT-JNB in Y ………. Flight Report Coming Soon!
EK764 JNB-DXB in Y ………. Flight Report Coming Soon!
EK225 DXB-SFO in Y ………. Flight Report Coming Soon!

If you're wondering, FA is the IATA code for Safair, a smallish South African airline. And GRJ is the IATA code for George Airport. George is a small city in the south of the country.
Here's a map of my routing to Johanesburg (courtesy of www.gcmap.com) :




This FRs going to be shorter. This was a redeye flight o I didn't take too many photos of the WC, etc. to not disturb othe pax.

Flight Report

After an uneventful four-hour layover at DXB I made my way to the boarding gate

A Note on DXB:
At DXB it is very hard to get around. There are sometimes Duty Free Malls seperating one gate from the next. The gates are also very hard to find. The boarding process once you find your gate is equally bad. You go through the usual doc check, then you think you are going stright to the plane. Instead you are off to a holding area. This holding area leads you (after another doc check) finnaly to the gate.

Most of the pax on this flight seem to be South Africans returning from holidays. EK is a good option for them if they're going to India, Sri Lanka, S. America, N. America, Asia, and more. This flight must be very useful to connecting pax because it departs at 11:25 pm so if you are on an evening arrival, you gat a better layover than overnighting @ DXB.

Boarding at gate A23:



I really like the nose of the 777-300ER. I made this pic my cover photo:



Our plane tonight is A6-ECU

My fusalage shot (unfortuntly the lighting in the gate seriously implacated the pic):



While Boarding:



The load factor of this flight must be close to full (in Y). I was expecting it to not be so good. Keep in mind that it is still South Arican school holidays, and the majority of pax are South Africans.

The IFE was the old version:



A lot of Flight Reporters don't perticularly like the old IFE. I think it's fine. The content is the same, the layout is the sme. The only things that are different about it are the remote, functions of the remote, responsiveness, and screen quality. On any other airline, the old IFE would be great. It's just that EK does even better with it's new IFE.

The blankets were good quality, as on EK226:



Tray Table:



My apologies about forgetting the legroom shot. For the record, the legroom was good, pitch OK:

The headphones:



The headphones on this flight look mutch better then the ones on EK226, but they fall apart. They must have fell apart 20 or 30 times during the 7.5 hr flight. I think EK knows this so they give higher quality headphones on the longer flights (On the way back, that pattern was repeated, on EK764 I had bad headphones, on EK225 I had good ones).

Takeoff was realitively late. I forget by how much.

A meal was served very efficiantly, shortly after takeoff. The menu (in my wording, not EKs) was as follows:


Starter:
Lentil saled with smoked turkey

Main:
Grilled Chicken
–or–
Beef Stew

Dessert:
Carrot Cake


My Beef Stew try as presented:



The starter was acceptable. The lentils were bland. However the turkey, though small was flavorful and juicy.

The dessert was OK. Nothing special. I would have prefered the chocolate delice that I had on EK226.

My Beef Stew unveiled:



It was really good. The menu didn't mention that the sauce was a demi-glace. The sauce was rich, thick, and flavorful. I mixed with the potatoes. The potatoes were very good too. They weren't dry or powdery. I was worried about both of those things because on UA903 SFO-FRA (the only other time I had potatoes on a plane), my potatoes in the KSML were really bad. They must have been made from powder. The vegetables weren't overcooked, and were flavorful.

In conclusion a very good meal with EK.

As I said earlier, I'm not going to take any pix mid-flight. The WCs were fine.

Before landing we were served a breakfast:



This was a poor excuse for breakfast. It was stale, tasteless, and overipe fruit. With a cold croissnt, and two slices of cheesse. Not OK. EK really needs to work on the breakfast. I did some research, and it turns out the cheese, croissant, and fruit is what EK serves for all it's breakfasts on mid haul flights. A better choice would be a hot croissant with maybe a yoghurt.

Landing at JNB was about 45 mins late. Immigration was inefficient. JNB Airport isn't very good at all.

My last pic of a/c (sorry for being upside-down) :




Summery

Overall a good flight with EK. The on-time proformance wasn't good, neither was the breakfast. But everything else was very good. The first meal was served really efficiently. The FAs were efficient and friendly. EK just needs to work on their breakfasts for mid-haul flights.


Thanks for reading. Please leave a response in the comment section. :-)