Review of Emirates flight Dubai → Vienna in Business

Airline, airport and travel agency employees used to get heavily discounted tickets from airlines almost whenever they wanted to travel - but this was decades ago. Airlines rarely offer real discounts nowadays. I was however lucky to get an open-jaw ticket on Emirates in business class from Budapest to Dubai to Vienna for about 25% of the regular price. The only small drawback was that lounge access and airport transfers were not included.

I took a Careem (similar to Uber) from my hotel in Deira (a district of Dubai) to the airport for 50 dirhams (12 €). The driver asked me if I was flying Economy or Business class - there's a completely separate entrance and check-in area for Emirates' Business (and First) class passengers.

There were quite a few passengers and check-in didn't seem to be very quick. A helpful employee suggested that I use the self check-in - she assisted me during the entire time. She also checked my Covid documents.

Quite a lot of departures from Dubai as always.

Separate passport and security control were available and both of them had friendly staff.

I took the elevators up to the departure area.

As I didn't have lounge access I just spent the remaining time (about one hour) near the gate area using the free Wi-fi provided by the airport.

The aircraft for this flight was an A380, registration number A6-EEI, first registered in 2013.

Pre-boarding started at 14.45 and boarding started at 15.00.

Most of Emirates' A380s have a three-class configuration (Economy, Business and First). The lower deck is entirely made up of Economy Class in a 3-4-3 configuration. First Class takes the front part of the upper deck in a 1-2-1 configuration. Business Class has the larger part of the upper deck also in a 1-2-1 configuration with a total of 76 seats. Half of the single seats on the two sides are nearer to the windows and the other half are nearer to the aisle. Both are very suitable for solo travellers. Half of the seats in the middle are right next to each other, thus ideal for couples, while the other half are a bit further from each other, closer the aisles.

I selected seat 18K at check-in - a window seat.

Legroom is huge. This seat is very comfortable.

Storage area for pillows and blankets.

Drinks (Evian still water, Perrier sparkling water, Pepsi), charging ports and a tablet to control the screen are all next to the seat.

This is what a seat closer to the aisle looks like (seat 19K).

Load was only 28/76 in business class on this flight. I moved to seat 23K. This seat is in the smaller aft Business Class cabin next to the window, there's a bulkhead in front of it, and is one of the seats that offers the most privacy on this plane. The nearest other passengers to me were two rows behind in the middle - meters away.

A face mask and a hand sanitizer were offered, followed soon by a hot wet towel.

There were also some socks and eyeshades by the seat.

The seat controls.

Smartphone sized remote control for the entertainment screen.

Headphones.

The view from the seat before push-back…

..and after push-back which was at 15.37 for a scheduled departure time of 15.40. An expected flight time of 5 hours and 45 minutes was announced.

Take-off was at 15.53. Some views of Dubai during and after take-off:

Tail camera view.

A cabin crew member came to my seat shortly after we reached our cruising altitude and asked me: "Would you like to have a mattress?" (I didn't).

The aft part of the upper deck. This area was unserviced due to Covid.

Let's have a look at the menus.

Emirates offers Veuve Cliquot Yellow Label champagne. It retails at about 48 € a bottle in most European countries.

The choice of wine is not huge but the quality is good.

Emirates offers a very impressive choice of 5 types of moctails and 12 types of coctails.

The choice of aperitifs, spirits, liqueurs and whiskies is not less impressive.

Here's the dinner menu with a choice of three appetisers, three main courses and three desserts plus cheese.

I was asked what time I wanted to have dinner. I said at about 18.00.

First I had some warm nuts and a glass of Kir Royal.

I listened to some music then I started to watch a movie (more details about the entertainment options later in this review) and enjoyed the views.

It was time to have dinner. I started with some Traditional Arabic Mezze with homous, spinach bil zeit, labneh with mint and stuffed vine leaf. It was delicious. I had a glass of champagne with it.

My main course was Pan-fried beef tenderloin served with porcini mushroom sauce, mashed potatoes, sautéed green beans and carrots. Beef is usually not very good on flights but this was probably the best beef I've ever had on a plane. Not only the beef was perfect but all the vegetables were also very tasty. I had a glass of 2010 Château Pédesclaux red wine from Pauillac, a small town near Bordeaux which I visited many years ago. This wine was excellent. It retails at about 55 € a bottle in France.

I had Mango mille-feuille as a dessert. It was good.

Let's have a look at the entertainment options offered by Emirates.

Hundreds of movies are available in 55 categories in dozens of languages.

There are 60 categories of music and all of them have a large number of songs.

My favourites are the UK Chart No.1 Hits from all years starting from the 50s. (OK, not exactly the songs that you see on this photo).

A large number of TV shows, podcasts, audios and games are also available.

I watched three full movies during this flight and then listened to music towards the end.

Some nice views as we were getting further from Dubai's mild winters to Europe's snowy landscapes typical for January.

Some nice feature of the flight show as we were getting closer to Vienna.

We landed at 18.51 and were at the gate at 18.57 at Vienna Airport for a scheduled arrival time of 18.50.