Review of Emirates flight from Melbourne to Singapore in Business

Note: This report is long, I’ve tried to be as comprehensive as I could so as to provide an overall flying experience on this aircraft’s Business class product. I hope you’ll enjoy it! I took a few days to complete this report and have not got the time to vet through it for any spelling / typo errors, do let me know if you spot any!
It’s been about a year since I started writing flight reports. To commemorate this special personal milestone, I have decided to share my first Business class flight report! This report covers a flight from Melbourne to Singapore an Emirates B777-300ER. It was the return flight that brought me home after I spent more than four months in Australia as a university exchange student. I was so reluctant about going home because life was just so great in Australia. However, Emirates made my day when they upgraded both my girlfriend and I to Business class on our return flight! Here’s the experience in detail!
Emirates EK405
Aircraft Registration: A6-EBQ
Origin: Australia Melbourne Tullamarine International Airport (MEL)
Destination: Singapore Changi International Airport (SIN)
Date: Thursday, 4 December 2014
Boarding Time: 1800h (UTC+11:00)
STD/STA: 1900h (UTC+11:00) to 2335h (UTC+08:00)
ATD/ATA: 1901h (UTC+11:00) to 2325h (UTC+08:00)
Estimated Duration: 07 hours 35 minutes
Actual Duration: 07 hours 28 minutes
Flight Distance: About 3,754 miles / 6,041 km

EK405 is a flight that I am extremely familiar with, having flown on it for many times since April 2013. On the day of the flight, we planned to arrive at the airport just in time for the flight and hence we boarded the airport bus only at 4pm – three hours before the scheduled departure.

While there’s quite a bit of distance from my girlfriend’s place to Melbourne airport, the airport bus was still an extremely convenient way to get to the airport. In about slightly more than an hour, we were transferred directly to the airport – it was about 90 minutes prior to departure. A little rush, but there were still a bit of time before the counters close.

At this time, one would expect the counters to be almost empty most passengers would logically have completed check-in. Nevertheless, I was not surprise to see that a long queue was still present in front of the Economy class counters.
I felt extremely fortunate to hold a Qantas Silver card, which allowed us to breeze through the entire process by utilizing the Business class counters.
After handing both our passports to the agent, we immediately began to load our four check-in bags onto the conveyer belt.
With four months worth of belongings, my check-in luggage earned itself a “Heavy” tag as it weighed up to 29kg. I hope the luggage handler didn’t curse at my luggage; my sincere appreciation to them for delivering all our bags back to Singapore safely!

After we were done with our luggage, I expected to collect back our passports with two boarding passes immediately; and then off we go to pass through immigration.
What happened, however, was that the agent was still frantically working on her keyboard and she did not look up at us until almost thirty seconds later. And then, here was the conversation:
“We didn't know the two of you are travelling together, so they upgraded you (pointing at me) to Business, but she (pointing at my girlfriend) is still in Economy.
Do you want to keep it this way? Or do you both want to sit together in Economy?
At this moment, she must have been expecting that I will most likely reply in an affirmative manner – agreeing with the arrangements made by the airline. But, no. I did not.
I asked that we be seated together and assured that even if it was going to be in Economy, it’s fine. (Well, of course I was hoping that they will instead upgrade both of us! But I thought that was asking for too much.)
The agent seemed a little bit shocked at first, but quickly regained her professionalism and explained that she will first handle our luggage and then inform her manager to handle and conclude our case.
With 42kg (Silver) + 30kg (Economy Class) of baggage allowance, our check-in bags did not cause any further trouble and they were very soon making their way to the aircraft.
The next person we met was the Emirates Duty Manager. The moment we walked to his counter, he took our passports and began working on his computer again. Moments later, he looked up, smiled and said “Both Business!”

Those two magical words concluded the rather extended check-in process. But at that point in time, the wait was definitely worth it!
At about 5.30pm, we went through passport controls with an extremely good mood!

Did you see the two Christmas trees in the picture above? Maybe Emirates decided to give us an early Christmas present that day. We were 100% satisfied with the early Christmas gift!

As we were operationally upgraded only at the counters, we could only begin enjoying most of the Business class experience after boarding the aircraft. Prior to that, everything was as per normal – no fast track for security screening, no lounge access; but there was of course priority boarding.
Seriously, it didn’t matter as boarding was going to commence in a few minutes. During the short period of time just before boarding commenced, I raced to the other end of the terminal for a little plane spotting. My girlfriend just took a seat in the boarding lounge.

The first aircraft that caught my eye was B-5938, a China Eastern A330-200. This aircraft flew back to Shanghai-Pudong as MU740 that night.

Being a frequent flyer onboard EK405, I have observed that Gate 11 is the gate used by this flight most of the time. It is impossible to take any decent photographs of the aircraft near the gate… The best angle that one can obtain is probably this:

But, after flying so many times with EK405, I have already found out long ago the correct spot in the terminal to take a good picture of the aircraft parked at that gate. Here you go!

These are two different photographs, by the way.
Anyway, the aircraft that brought us back to Singapore that evening was A6-EBQ. Its first flight took place on 14 July 2006.
On the day of our flight, A6-EBQ arrived in Melbourne early in the morning as EK405 after a long journey from Dubai via Singapore. The aircraft was then parked at a remote bay in Melbourne Airport before its flight back home to Dubai at night.

On the way back to my boarding gate, two more aircrafts caught my attention. The first was B-5951, another widebody from China. B-5951 is an extremely young aircraft and its first flight took place only in June 2014. Even as of now, it’s not even one year old.

This China Southern A330-300 was scheduled to return to Guanzhou-Baiyun as CZ322 that night.

The boarding lounge in this area is always deserted in the late afternoons. No one will be there, and most of the time, there will not be any aircrafts as well.

Looking at this FIDS, you can see that there won’t be a single international departure from 7.30pm to 10.10pm that night. It seems to be the case most of the time (?)

And after a long walk, I was back at my flight’s boarding gate. (I am sorry for the bright background; this was my first few times using a new Sony camera and thus I wasn’t exactly sure of its functions yet.)

Here’s the second aircraft that I mentioned. Another flight bound for Singapore, scheduled to depart 30 minutes after us. This Singapore Airlines A330-300 will head back to Singapore Changi Airport as SQ208.

Alright, time to board my aircraft!

We missed the priority boarding call. So, after I returned to the boarding lounge, we immediately headed downstairs to board the aircraft. EK405 was a full flight that day. And I mean, literally full, with not a single empty seat.

Boarding alone took quite some time!

Oh well, even though it was the super-familiar-Emirates-B77W again…

We were assigned seats that were very unfamiliar to both of us!

You can probably imagine how hard I made my new camera work upon settling at my seat. (: The cabin photographs shall be consolidated in a section of this report – you will see them soon!
Let’s take a look at the pre-departure Business class service. After most passengers boarded the aircraft, the FAs began to provide us with pre-departure drinks.

We were not in the mood to get any alcoholic drinks yet, so it was juices first for both of us!

After taking a sip, my girlfriend commented that even the juices in Business class taste better. Is it true that fruit juices provided in Business differ from those we get in Economy? It definitely tasted nicer!
Up next – the Wine List!

You can see from the meticulous design of this booklet that Emirates has indeed put in quite a lot of effort in this area of their service. I am not exactly knowledgeable when it comes to alcoholic beverages; please do take a look at the choices on offer!

When boarding was completed, the captain came onto the PA system to make a welcome announcement. Here’s the video, and the contents in case you find the video too soft:
- Welcome onboard EK405 bound for Dubai via Singapore
- Introduction of the first officer, purser, and senior flight attendants
- Push back will happen in about 10 minutes
- An estimated flying time of about 7 hours and 5 minutes
- Cruising altitude will first be 32,000ft, and this will be increased to 36,000ft later on
- Estimated arrival time in Singapore is 11.35pm, with a ground temperature of 28 deg c
- Flight will mostly be smooth after we clear Melbourne’s airspace

We pushed back just a minute after schedule. From all my past experiences flying EK405, it has always been a very punctual flight, and it seems to also be the case this time round. Conversely, my experiences on EK404 were a little more varied. Nonetheless, to be fair to Emirates, they have always been professional even in handling delays – be it a delay of 30 minutes to one of 2 hours plus.
On the other hand, many other major airlines from the similar part of the world as Emirates do not seem to be as well prepared when their flights get delayed. (This is an impression I get from reading flight reports of those airlines; I have not had an opportunity to really experience any other middle-eastern airline before.)

While taxiing to the gate, FAs also distributed oshibori to every passenger. Do note that these hot towels are also distributed in Economy on Emirates flights. Apart from Emirates, I only know that Singapore Airlines does the same. Are there any other carriers that provide oshibori for all passengers?

At about 7.13pm, the crew members were also seated for takeoff.

One major disadvantage of being seated on the front row window seats is that our personal screens have to be stowed for takeoff and landing. You feel that it’s a little unfair when all other fellow passengers were already enjoying their movies.
At least I could look up at the screen on the ceiling to see the aircraft’s nose camera! But I couldn’t maintain in that posture for long, otherwise my neck would probably have started aching.

Boarding was conducted really efficiently. Push back was also considered punctual. However, the queue for take off took quite a while. I am guessing this should be because of the fact that domestic operations get rather busy at Melbourne Airport, despite it having a relatively small number of international flights.
We finally took off from Runway 16 at 7.21pm.

The view of Melbourne after takeoff was quite astonishing! It must have been great to sit at the window seats on the right. I wouldn't be surprise if many people were snapping away on their cameras or smartphones.

The aircraft made a sharp right turn soon after departure, and we passed 10,000ft about five minutes after takeoff.

After taking off, it is typical for an Emirates corporate video to be played throughout the cabin. The length of this video isn’t exactly short; it will be first played in Arabic and then repeated in English. After taking so many Emirates flights, the video does get a little annoying.

Now we are into the Cabin Introduction part of this flight report. As I took many photos of the cabin throughout the flight, I will be compiling them together in this section of the report so as to better describe and introduce the Business class cabin.
First of all, do note that this is an older version of Emirates’ B77W aircrafts. This means that the individual screens in Economy weren’t widescreens and the in-flight entertainment system, i.e. the famous ICE system, wasn’t the most updated version as well.
Let’s begin by looking at two cabin photographs. Many of us are aware that the Business class cabin on Emirates’ B77W are aligned in a 2-3-2 manner. In that sense, not all of the Business class seats have aisle-access, and that makes this product much less competitive as compared to many other Business class products offered by competitors. (Say… Cathay Pacific?)
Just try to imagine that you are travelling in Economy alone today, on a Malaysia Airlines B772 aircraft. At the check-in counter, you found out that you are assigned the center seat in the Economy cabin with the 2-5-2 layout. Terrible, isn’t it?
Now, what if we tweak the situation slightly, and you are now travelling in Business alone on Emirates’ B77W? It probably will just feel a little bit better to know that you are assigned the center seat. Right?

This is the back view of the seats.

And now we shall take a closer look at the seat.

The padding of the headrest was very thick. The softness of it also made it really comfortable to lie on – definitely a great plus for the relatively narrow business class seat.

The seat pitch was incredible. Just look at how far was the seat pocket. It almost caused me to forget to take a look at the in flight magazines. Being seated on the first row, the seat pitch that we enjoyed was even slightly better than the other seats in Business.

However, in the upright position, I do not like the leg rest at all as it was totally getting in my way. If I extended it fully, I wouldn’t be able to rest my feet and legs properly; but if I folded it away, it will be bulging out and when I rested my legs on the footrests that were folded away, it got a little uncomfortable.

These were the buttons to adjust the seat recline. They were located on the left arm rest and were extremely intuitive to use.

Holding onto the left button will slowly turn your seat into one with an extremely relaxed position. In this position, the footrest wasn’t a nuisance any more. You can also see the pillow provided in Business class in the following picture – not really a huge one but big enough to allow for a comfortable sleep during your journey.

Here’s a photo of the seat in the lie flat position. My apologies for taking such a “crooked” photo – I am still learning how to take better pictures of these seats yeah (still used to Economy) xD

After the seats, we take a look at the mini touchscreen panel located beside the seats.

For a screen of such a small size, it was actually quite heavy to hold.

After a single tap on the screen, it will light up and then we could start using it. The only downside was that the screen wasn’t as responsive as we would’ve expected. But that’s probably just a small issue.

Apart from using the three buttons to adjust the seat recline, one can also utilize the small touchscreen panel to make more specific adjustments of the seats.
The best function would probably be the ability to “save” your favourite seat posture. That way, even after you have adjusted your seat to the upright postion for your meals, you can immediately return to your lazing posture after finishing the meals.

I also find it quite cool that the panel could even adjust my headrest. In fact, I think that was the only way we could adjust them.

The reading lights (which will be shown later) could also be switched on / off using the panel.

The following screen actually controls the cursor on your personal IFE screen (the larger screen in front of you). However, it was actually rather hard to use. My touchscreen panel was particularly unresponsive that day and thus I requested for an FA to assist. To my surprise, she actually tried to adjust the cursor on the actual IFE screen by touching and dragging it. Nonetheless, that screen was unfortunately not a touchscreen and I was just surprised that she wasn’t aware. (Well, I didn't know too.)

Given the unresponsiveness of the mini touchscreen panel, the keyboard was really difficult to use and one would probably just give up after a while.

Apart from the touchscreen panel, a traditional remote control was also available on the seat. This remote control was much easier to use and I recall using it for the entire journey eventually.

The position of the reading light was good. Apart from switching it on using the touchscreen panel as mentioned above, one can also control it using the traditional remote control.

The privacy screen that you use in the picture above can be operated using the following two buttons. Really intuitive too! (The guy seated in the middle seat of the three-seats section definitely needs this if he’s travelling alone.)

This small table here was for placing the drinks and nuts.

And in the next picture, we see the half-folded table. This is already much bigger than the tables you find on budget airlines. (But I know it’s unfair to compare like this)

At full size, the table was really wide, making it extremely suitable for work on it apart from dining.

In Business class, almost everything is semi-automated, i.e. you need control everything with buttons. The illuminated blue buttons in the following picture were used to control the window shades.

Every single cabin window in Business class was well decorated too. They look extremely gorgeous, but some people may think that Emirates has been overdoing it.

Since the IFE screen has appeared, let’s now move on to the personal IFE screens! This is probably what most travellers care about anyway!
On the main screen, it seemed like the languages available were only English, Arabic and Japanese. I wonder why weren’t there other languages?

The noise-cancelling headphones were already placed on each seat prior to boarding.

It had an almost perfect quality, and that was probably why I used it to watch two movies, one documentary, and listen to several songs.

For readers who are not as familiar with Emirates, you may have been wondering why Emirates calls its in-flight entertainment “ICE” and not IFE. Actually, its quite a smart acronym that stands for Information, Communications, and Entertainment.

In the “information” section, there’s the airshow, introduction to Skywards (Emirates’ frequent flyer programme), introduction of Emirates, and introduction of the airline’s base city Dubai.

Emirates actually has a really good airshow channel on its aircrafts fitted with the new version of ICE. However, the airshow on this aircraft was just a really normal one.

To be fair, the resolution of the screen still makes the airshow channel really pleasant ot watch while listening to some music.

We now turn our attention to the amazing fleet of aircrafts that Emirates has. At that point in time, they had almost 60 A380s. Now, the number of A380s in the fleet is 61.
Also, the combined number of B773 and B77W is 116 now, up from 114 at that time. Do you know that, apart from these wide-body aircrafts, Emirates actually does have a mini A319 in its fleet? Nevertheless, I am quite sure I will never get the chance to step into it. (See for yourself and you will know why: Emirates A319 Corporate Private Jet)

Then, we have the “communications” section that offers phone, email, and seat-to-seat messaging services.

Finally, the most important “entertainment” section – the part of the IFE that most passengers will be concerned about.

In comparison to the new system, the old version probably looks much less appealing. Nonetheless, even the layout isn’t as glorious, the number of entertainment choices that Emirates has loaded into the AVOD system is still highly impressive! Apart from radio channels and CDs, there are also short television programmes and live TV broadcast from BBC, CNN, CNBC etc.

For the movies, even though there were probably more than hundred choices, I found it a little hard to search for the movie I on the movie listing that looked rather boring. I would recommend that you flip through the IFE guide before deciding on the shows that you would like to watch. Otherwise, it’d get a little troublesome to click on every choice in the movie listing on the screen; just to decide what you want to watch.

Nonetheless, I am sure many of us will agree the in-flight entertainment in Emirates’ flights is already one level ahead of many other major airlines in the world.
Back in cabin, I have a few more photos to show you. Here, you can see that screens for the three seats in the front row are mounted on the walls. In contrast, for the two pairs of front row seats on both sides of the cabins, personal screens are stowed by the side of our seats and must remain stowed during takeoff and landing.

Just like I have mentioned previously, the overhead screen that was above me was showing the flight map all the way during the flight. Even when I was watching a movie, I just had to glance quickly at this screen to know the aircraft’s location.

Apart from watching movies to kill time, various magazines of different genres were also available in the cabin. However, if I remembered correctly, nobody actually took a magazine to read on that evening’s flight.

The last part of the short cabin tour will bring you to the lavatory of this aircraft. The first thing I realized upon stepping into the washroom was the colour of the toilet bowl. This colour actually reminded me of Etihad’s black toilet bowl.

Amenities such as toothbrushes, toothpaste tubes and combs were also well stocked.

Nice addition to the lavatory!

What catches your eye in the picture below? (Hint: Not the “return to seat” sign – while the seatbelt signs were on, everyone was already walking around in the cabin.)

Here’s the answer! Cosmetic towels are provided on top of paper towels! I wonder if this is a norm in Business class? I don’t recall seeing it on Cathay Pacific actually.

That’s all I have for the cabin introduction portion of this report. While I already began to use my new camera on this flight, I didn’t think of going to Economy class for any photographs at all. I think I just wanted to enjoy my time fully on this lucky flight, furthermore, the flight was fully packed that day and I probably wouldn’t be able to get any decent photos either.
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Back to the flight. The picture of the GE90 engine was taken at about 8pm Australian time, but because it was summer, the sun stays up high until later in the evening. Frankly speaking, I am really not used to having such a bright sky after 8pm. I am used to seeing the sky turn dark at about 7pm!

(All times will be recorded according to the destination’s time zone of UTC+08:00 from now on.) At about 4.39pm, we reached our first cruising altitude of 32,000ft.

The first movie we watched on that flight was “The Hundred-Foot Journey”. This is quite a nice story about an Indian family migrating to France and then opening an Indian restaurant in a small town. What made it interesting was that the Indian restaurant was situated directly opposite of a Michelin star fine-dining French restaurant.

Subtitles were only available in Arabic.

I also enjoyed eating the plate of nuts served by the FAs soon after we started watching our movie. This was accompanied with a glass of red wine and champage.

The footrest wasn’t much of a nuisance now and thus it was really comfortable sitting like that!

The seat belt signs were only extinguished very long after takeoff that day. I wonder why it was left switched on for so long because there weren’t any turbulence at all.

Looking out of the window again, the sky was finally becoming darker when the time was approaching 9pm in Australia. It was a pity that I still have not mastered the techniques of taking decent photographs with my camera yet; otherwise, the effects for the photograph below should’ve been quite good with my Sony RX100M3.

The meal was definitely what I’ve been looking forward to the most throughout my flight that evening. Being a frequent traveller who’s always stuck at the back in Economy, I guess it will be long before I start to tell the FAs in Business that “I am not eating my meals, please just let me sleep in and don’t wake me up”. xD
The reason is simple: we love food! How can we ever resist any kinds of foods? Let’s now take a quick look at the full Business class menu for dinner.

I will soon answer you if I think that Emirates’ catering deserves to be called “award-winning”.

For the drinks, there are lots of choices of both alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks, which was great!

For dinner, there were two choices of appetizer and three choices for main course. We thought that the soup would be served after the appetizer, but it didn’t appear eventually until we asked for it.

After the mains were served, we were also provided with two choices of dessert. But the cheese board and fruit selection never appeared.

The menu was quite thick, and it was because half of it was written in Arabic.

Let’s look at the food for real now. The breads and salad were unimpressive; I unfortunately do not have any impression of them at all.

Both of us chose the salmon choice for our appetizer. It was probably the best part of the meal service. Isn’t that a sad thing?

Two pairs of fork and knife were provided. There was also a spoon but really, what’s the use of it if they didn’t serve the soup at all. (I didn’t see many people being served the soup, unless probably if they asked for it.)

I chose the Prawn Biryani choice for my main course. The prawns were supposed to be marinated in “aromatic spices” and then slow cooked with rice etc… But no matter how nice it seemed to be described, all I can say is I was disappointed with it. Really. Disappointed. If I recall correctly, I didn’t even finish my rice – which is something that do not happen often because I usually finish all my food.

My girlfriend chose Butter Chicken for her main course. It was much better as the chicken meat was tender and tasty enough to make the entire dish appetizing. However, the rice was akin to those instant rice that you can find in Australia’s supermarket…

How about the mushroom soup that we asked for? It tasted a little like those instant soup we find in the supermarkets too…

After a series of disappointments, Emirates’ catering managed to redeem it self a little with the dessert choices. While I found the Coffee and Vanilla Mousse a little too sweet for my liking, I believe that it’s a problem of personal choice and I wouldn’t fault the airline’s catering service regarding this.

The Macadamia Nut Tart, on the other hand, was great!

Maybe we should have asked for two of this as we were actually trying to snatch it from each other. =P (Just kidding~ But it was really not bad.)

The tea served after our meal just managed at least taste like tea. That’s all the comments I’ll give to it.

One other thing that I wish to comment about is the speed and timing of meal service. When meal service commenced, it was already close to 10pm at our origin (Melbourne). For people like us who did not eat anything for dinner before the flight, we were really starving by then.
After dinner, we began watching a second movie. This was a real-life story about a handicapped dolphin that was sent to Clearwater Marine Aquarium in Florida, United States.

As we started on our movie, FAs distributed GODIVA chocolate boxes to every Business class passenger.

At about 7.23pm (Singapore time), our cruising altitude increased slightly by 2,000ft to 34,000ft, and we were just about to fly out of Australian airspace. The route taken by our flight that evening was really very direct – seems to always be the case for air traffic over Australian airspace. (Thumbs up!)

Anyway, the second movie we watched was really a very meaningful one. I do recommend it to everyone and maybe you can watch it on your next flight?

Cabin lights were turned off at about 7.30pm. Most people, including me, did not go to sleep on this late evening flight. However, I am actually regretting not testing out the angle lie flat bed on this flight.

At about 9.02pm, we left Australia. I definitely look forward to returning there again!

I am sure those of us who have flown with Emirates before would be very familiar with the starry ceiling in its aircraft!

As we entered Indonesia’s airspace, our cruising altitude increased by yet another 2,000ft. We continued the final leg of our journey towards Singapore at FL360.

There was not much time left for another movie, so we switched finish up our flight on a documentary. I still regret not sleeping for a while, just to test out the product.

We now move on to look at more food onboard flight EK405’s Business class that evening. In many previous Business class Flight Reports that I’ve read, it is common that one of the main focus is always on the meals provided on these flights. This time, even though my girlfriend and I got lucky and were both upgraded to Business class at zero additional cost, the meals and services provided by FAs were actually rather disappointing in my opinion.
Before addressing the second meal service, I would like to comment about the services provided on this flight. In Business class, I felt that the services provided were really sloppy and undetailed. Many FAs were just doing their duties in a relatively slip-shot manner and it makes me wonder if the extremely full flight was making them frustrated. The Asian FA on our aisle did not smile at all throughout the flight, in fact, she was even a little irritated and annoyed when passengers responded slower to her questions. There was this instance when a lady seated across the aisle was watching a movie using the noise-cancelling headsets; the FA approached her and began asking her for her meal or drink choices, and she completed her question before the lady could even remove her headset. When the lady requested politely for the FA to repeat her question, she really looked pissed off, and I found that to be a little unprofessional.
While I am really thankful that Emirates took such good care of my girlfriend and I (this being the second time we received an operational upgrade from this airline), I seriously ponder if I will be willing to spend any extra money to travel on EK’s Business class in future.
Okay, enough of me ranting. The second meal service consisted of a variety of light snacks. The variety provided was definitely good!

I again chose the choice of salmon for supper. Both of us love eating salmon, but after dinner, my girlfriend was reluctant to try more food. Therefore, it is unfortunate that I can only show everyone pictures of one out of the many choices available for supper.
For supper, my choice was good. This dish named “Salmon en Croute” was prepared well – the fish wasn’t too hard and the texture was awesome. The crust was also well prepared and it was not overwhelmed with the taste of butter. As for the sauce, it tasted delicious as well and wasn’t overly creamy. Overall, I was satisfied with this dish. I was happy that the catering service on Emirates managed to redeem itself further prior to the end of the flight.

Up to this point, you probably will realize that the two of us do not exactly drink alcoholic beverages much. xD Nonetheless, the juices provided by Emirates on this flight were great too! And I choose to believe that fruit juices served in Business were of a higher quality!

Landing preparation began with this short message from the crew. I support the usage of such messages as opposed to announcements over the PA system, especially for less urgent issues such as this (the closure of inflight duty free services). Otherwise, it’s really a little frustrating if a passenger is trying to complete his TV programme / movie before arrival and the crew still “wastes” his time making announcements that probably do not matter at all to him.

What I liked about the flight that night wasn’t actually the starry ceilings; what I actually enjoyed was the fact that the flight map was left playing on the overhead screen throughout the flight. In some other airlines, these screens may even be used for playing advertisements.

As the flight was about to come to an end, I spent the last portion of it listening to some beautiful K-pop music.

I have also not forgotten to snap pictures of the seat pocket contents! These photographs were taken using my old iPhone 5 and I apologize that they look a little “grainy”. First of all, the safety instructions card.

The magazine that Emirates had prepared specially for its First and Business class passengers, titled Portfolio. It’s a pity I did not have the time flip through it that evening.

The duty free catalogue.

And the main in-flight magazine for December 2014.

I spent some time taking photographs of the “important” sections in this magazine. First, the fleet details that we’ve already saw on the IFE screen previously.

And the impressive network maps that this airline has! This picture shows the Emirates destinations around Dubai and in East Asia.

Ever since partnering with Qantas, Emirates have been adding so many more flights to Australian and New Zealand cities. One cool fact that I can think of is the three Emirates A380 that arrive in Auckland airport every afternoon around 12.45pm to 1.30pm. You can take a look at this interesting photograph! The three flights arrive in Auckland from Melbourne (EK406), Sydney (EK412) and Brisbane (EK434).

Here are all the long distance flights from Dubai to North American cities.

And the shorter flights to Middle-Eastern cities.

Emirates is also extremely well-known for its super comprehensive European network. I am sure most people in European countries have heard of “Emirates” even if they don’t fly.

Emirates also has several destinations located in India.

And finally we have the network map for Africa.

It’s probably only in South America that Emirates has a lower level of existence with just three destinations.
While I am not particularly found of flying with Emirates, we got to agree that this is really an impressive airline when we discuss about its network coverage. No wonder many people enjoy flying with them because they really can bring you to most major cities in the world.
Regarding the seat pocket contents, finally we have the waste bag, and information cards regarding in-flight wifi connectivity and duty-free shopping on the IFE system. These items are kept neatly in a plastic folder.

I didn’t know where to place this photo when I was sorting out the photographs for this report. Basically, I just want to mention that bottled water was also distributed in Business. But I don’t recall the same thing in Economy.

Another announcement from the cockpit was made prior to landing:
- Aircraft will be descending towards Singapore Changi Airport in ten minutes
- ETA is 11.20pm, it’s about 15 minutes to landing now
- Weather at destination is good and ground temperature is 26 degree Celsius
- Thank you for flying with Emirates
- Have a nice stay in Singapore and a safe journey for transit passengers

This is the approach route that evening. We began our descend into Singapore at about 10.52pm.

Oshibori was distributed once more before landing so that we could freshen up before arriving at our destination.

The cabin lights were switched on briefly for landing preparations.

Before we were being asked to stow our screens, I spent the time listening to my albums in the IFE and watching the airshow’s cockpit view.

Finally, just before final approach, we were informed that we have to stow our screens.

Again, the lights were dimmed for landing. And Singapore was just round the corner.

Final approach! Returning home after spending four months overseas.

At about 11.19pm, our aircraft touched down on Changi Airport’s Runway 02L.

The arrival announcement was then made after landing.

We took only a few minutes to taxi from the runway to our gate at Terminal 1. There were many passengers on transit to Dubai, and I could see that they were eager to leave the aircraft to stretch a little in the terminal before another red-eye flight onwards to Dubai.

This time round, we could disembark earlier it felt great to be the first few leaving the aircraft.

After 4.5 months, I was back to the airport I am the most familiar with! It didn’t take us too long to pass the arrival immigration since we were able to make use of the automated clearance machines. We went on to the baggage carousel to collect our four checked baggage; and we waited for quite a while because as op-up passengers, our baggage do not qualify for priority delivery. Haha!

The arrival experience at Changi Airport has always been good. Apart from losing my luggage once (which technically wasn’t the airport’s fault as the bag was stranded in Hanoi), the arrival procedure has always been quick and easy.

In less than half an hour’s time after disembarking, I was already on my way home!

I appreciate that you’ve managed to complete the entire report, which probably is considered an extremely long one, yeah? I hope I wasn’t too detailed and the intention to provide everyone with a report as comprehensive as I could has been met, so that you can experience for yourself how it’s like to fly Emirates’ B77W Business class.
My Taiwanese friend took screenshots of my flight’s progress on FR24, thank you very much too!

I am adding on four more photos of the accessories bag distributed on this flight. I took these photos only after returning home.

Thank you for reading! Do leave a comment if there’s anything you’d like to discuss about, and also if you’ve spotted any grammatical or spelling errors in my report. (: