Review of Emirates flight from Dubai to Lyon in Economy

Welcome back flight reporters!
I hope you are all having nice and safe travels!
My summer routing is as follows:
DOH - DXB (NO REPORT)
DXB - LYS (YOU ARE HERE)
NCE - DXB (TO COME)
DXB - DOH (POSSIBLY TO COME)
And now, as the Emirates safety video would somewhat say: Sit back, relax; and enjoy this flight (report)
Now that school was finally over (finished 9th grade :P ), summer finally arrived! As usual, I am going to go to France for 5 weeks and then return back to Qatar where I live.
On a warm Sunday 28th of June morning, my mom and I woke up ready for our departure to (this time) Lyon. We almost usually land in Paris, but this time, landing in Lyon seemed to be more convenient for some reason unknown to me.
We arrived at Hamad International Airport at 6:30 am for our flight to Dubai that departed at 9:45 and arrived at DXB local time 11:45.
Everything went smoothly and I was then face to face with our bird for this short flight. A boeing 777-300 (non ER) with registration A6-EMV:

Fligth was good overall, and I experienced for the first time a crosswind landing due to high winds, possibly because a sand storm was present.
Taxi at DXB was the shortest of my life (we exitted the runway, and our parking gate was directly straight beyond that point). It was also the shortest transfer of my life, as we only took 5 minutes from the point when the wheels touched the ground to the point where we had cleared security. :O :O
Thus, we made our way to gate B26 (we had take the train to get there) for our onward connecting flight to Lyon. At the gate, I could see a B77W with registration A6-ENS, which meant the newest cabins with a massvie 12 inches personal TV screen (PTV). I thus got all excited!
Some views of A6-ENS.

As you can see, DXB airport is not very spotter-friendly with these windows…
BUT… when the boarding was announced, and passangers were able to go down to the waiting area on the bottom floor, my excitement quickly disappeared when I saw that our true plane was A6-EBQ (the plane had been hidden from my sight whilst on the top floor), making its fist flight in 2006 and having 9 years. This evidently meant that we were going to be stuck with the old style cabins. I also know that all Emirates B77W with a registration in the form of A6-EB… have old cabins.
Disappointing PTV size, especially when you have known the 12 inches :P Movie selection (particularly French moves) was very poor.

Overhead Pannel:

The load factor in this flight, I would say, was about 80 percent based on my cabin walkthrough I made later during the flight.
My mom and I were seated in row 30, in the first two of the four middle seats (seats D and E). Next to me, the seat was empty, and the last seat of the 4 seats was occupied by a woman. However, once boarding was completed,the woman moved to the row in front, where the four middle seats were vacant. This consequently meant that we luckily had two extra seats for just us two. Tons of space! Therefore, the narrowness created by the 3*4*3 configuration was not an issue at all.
Seat Pitch was very good:

Some random pics:

Adjustable Headrest and other features:

Push back was done 2 minutes before schedule.
Taxi to runway 30R, followed by a shaky take off.
10 minutes after take off; the video that explores the aspects of ICE entertainment system was launched, thus pausing my movie I had already started. This was really annoying. Plus, on all my previous flights, this video was lauchned while on the ground after the safety video, not whilst in flight…
Speaking of the IFE system…
Each time you want to watch a movie, or watch some TV programes, you have to skip 3 minutes of exasperating advertisements. This really got on my nerves! The problem is made worse as, with this old IFE, there is no timeline bar showing how many minutes remain on whatever you are watching, or how many minutes have gone by since the start of your episode. With Emirates' latest IFE; you can simply click on the timeline bar in order to skip the advertisements. Here, you have to continuosuly press the screen until you have skipped the ads. And sometimes, you will find out that you have pressed too much, and gone to the end of the episode… (All of this is provided you want to skip the ads :P )
Moreover, the IFE, although having a decent resolution, was not very responsive at times. In addition, even though I appreciate the fact that there was 6 episodes of the newest season of The Big Bang Theory (Season 8), I would appreciate that the 6 episodes present are the 6 first ones, not just 6 random ones from the entire season…

Menus were distributed:

Another thing that caught my attention was the MASSIVE IFE boxes under 3 of the 4 middle seats. WOW! That sure must reduce leg space by A LOT!

For the first time on all my Emirates flight, no appetizer (savoury snack + choice of drinks) was served… I did not understand why. Lunch service was directly served over Iran.
I asked to take the salmon, but, the fligth attenetant responded by saying that the salmon was gone, confirming that everyone had asked for it. OK, seriously, this was unacceptable. I do not even understand how and why there was no salmon, given I was certainly not at the back of the aircraft. (Unless the cabin we were seated in was the last one to be served?)
The overall lunch:

The salad was very good! Well seasonsed and refreshing:

The chicken was very disappointing. I did not like the sauce, and the vegetables were too hard. :/

Then, finally, the drinks service came. I do not understand why they do not directly offer the drinks sevice when they hand you your lunch… I took an apple juice.

Love the little spicy sauce you can eat with the crackers:

The dessert was excellent:

The tray is very small:

After the lunch,; I got the opporunity to take some (blurry) shots of the wing:

I decided to take a nap, and for some reason, slept very well and woke up here: (Romania I think)

Yes, we are quite indeed in a Boeing aircraft:

We flew over Croatia and hit some turbulences. A pre-arrival snack was then handed out:

The bun of the sandwich was disgusting. It was all wet and soggy. The cookies, on the other hand, were excellent.
Orange mood lightening throughout the entire flight…

Some more random shots:

The flight path:

We started our descent into Lyon, with some nice views of the Alps I managed to get from my seat. We landed on runway 36R with some 25 minutes before shcedule.
Some seats:

The only shot of the business class I could get:

Some blurry shots of the plane as we disembark:

We have arrived at the end of this fligth report. I hope yoyu have enjoyed reading it.
Feel free to comment and ask any auestions you ay have.
Safe Travels!
Etienne16