A Layover in Lahore

Who would have thought that when I stepped on the plane to go to Lahore, Pakistan and back, I wouldn’t be coming home until more than 24 hours later!

As I mentioned in my roster post of August, it was supposed to be a quick trip to LHE and back. The flight is around 3 hours each way, so not too long but still sufficient time to do the service. We had a full cabin in business class so we were busy, but since we departed Dubai around 3am, plenty of the passengers chose to sleep and didn’t have breakfast.

As we were approaching Lahore, the captain made a PA that the weather was very bad, thunderstorms and lots of rain around the area of the airport. Amongst the crew we made jokes that we would be turning around and going back to Dubai instead of landing….if only we knew what was to come!

Shortly after the purser informed us all that instead of landing in LHE, we would be diverting to MUX (Multan, another city in Pakistan around 30 mins flight time from LHE). The captain also made another announcement to inform all of our passengers, who of course were not very pleased!

Once we landed in Multan, we had no idea how long we would be staying on ground or if the passengers would be offloaded there. We ended up serving so much tea and coffee in business class that we ran out of cups! Luckily after around an hour on ground the weather had improved slightly and we were ready to head back to LHE. The flight was less than 30 minutes and we stayed strapped in to our jump seats the whole time, so at least we finally got to sit down for a moment!

After disembarkation, what usually happens on a turnaround is that the cleaners come on, and we prepare the galley and cabin for the return sector. This means unloading all the unused meals from the ovens and loading the new ones, preparing the seats with blankets, headsets, water bottles, menus, etc. After that we start our safety and security search. We didn’t even get the chance to start the security search before the purser made a PA for everyone to come to the front….

We were no longer legal to fly back to Dubai, as our duty had started in the middle of the night and we now had been on the aircraft for too long. That meant we would have to stay in Lahore! None of us were particularly pleased about that to be perfectly honest, as we all had plans for the day ahead. Our captain liaised with the ground staff for a hotel to be organised for us, and we waited around in the airport for a while whilst everything got sorted. Unfortunately we had one Indian crew member with us who wasn’t allowed to enter Pakistan, so she had to stay in an airport lounge for the next 10 hours (in uniform!) while we headed off to the hotel.

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The weather looked just like an English summer…rain, rain and more rain!

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September Roster

I’m sure I said the same last month, but where on earth has this year gone?! It’s just flown by, and it’ll be Christmas before we know it!

But before that, I’ve got some flights to do, so without further ado here is my roster for September.

  • SKT (Sialkot, Pakistan – turnaround)
  • MEL – AKL (Melbourne, Australia – Auckland, New Zealand & then back to Melbourne)
  • FCO (Rome, Italy)
  • HKT (Phuket, Thailand)
  • DOH (Doha, Qatar – turnaround)
  • SYD (Sydney, Australia)

Two quick turnarounds, although maybe someone will be kind enough to take the first one and give me a day off?! Unlikely but you never know! 😀

The MEL – AKL trip is over 6 days and even though I usually don’t like long multi sector trips I’m very happy with this one as I’ll get to see my cousin Sarah who lives in Melbourne. I’m also hoping she’ll be able to accompany me on the layover to Auckland, which should be fun.

Then I’m heading back to Rome, one of my favourite cities in Italy, where I’ll be indulging in plenty of pasta and gelato!

After that I’m lucky enough to have been rostered a 48 hour layover in Phuket! Normally almost all of our layovers (other than west coast US) are just 24 hours, so I was very pleasantly surprised to see that on my roster.

Then another quick turnaround to Doha – this is one of the shortest flights we have at around 50 minutes each way, so it’s a quick afternoon’s work back in time for dinner!

At the end of the month I’ll be heading off to Sydney, a direct flight there and back with a 30 hour layover. I was rostered a London but swapped with my friend Sally so she could have some extra days off after her leave and I can see my grandparents who I haven’t seen in far too long. Win-win situation!

P.s. Follow me on Instagram & Twitter for more day-to-day updates of where I am in the world! 🙂

Amsterdam in the sunshine

If you read my August roster post, you would have seen that I was rostered to fly to LHR this month. Since I went home for 5 days at the end of June, and the timings of the Heathrow flight weren’t ideal to go home, when I was sent a swap for Amsterdam, I decided to accept it! It also meant I could have a lie-in before the flight… 😉

We landed into Amsterdam early evening, and were greeted by the most beautiful sunset. I felt like we deserved it after a very hectic full flight!

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Once we got to the hotel a group of us met downstairs in the restaurant for dinner, and discussed plans for the next day. I’ve been to Amsterdam plenty of times (including before working for Emirates) so I wasn’t particularly fussed about doing much. However the weather forecast looked great and it’s a shame not to enjoy European summer whilst it lasts, so we made plans to head to the city in the morning.

6 of us took the train into the city, and after a short ride were ready to do some exploring! Out of all of the others, I think there was only 1 other person who’d been before, so as you can imagine everyone was stopping to take pictures every few metres. Myself and one of the lovely girls from economy, Sarah (who also reads my blog – yay!) split off and made our way through the windy streets.

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Wat Pho & The Grand Palace, Bangkok

I’ve been to Bangkok almost 10 times since I started flying, yet somehow I’ve just never gotten round to visiting any of the temples there! Whilst I’ve visited the incredible Chatuchak Weekend Market (which is over 35 acres in size) and tried my hand at cooking some delicious Thai dishes, I decided it was probably about time I go and see what Thailand is really all about.

Since we landed early evening, a group of us headed to dinner at a lovely little restaurant just a few minutes walk from the hotel – every crew knows it and inside was another group of crew who were on their first leg of the 9-day Bangkok – Sydney – Christchurch trip. After a delicious (but very spicy!) dinner accompanied by a fresh coconut and finished with mango sticky rice of course, it was time to call it a night.

A couple of the girls from economy planned to head to the temples in the morning, so I asked if I could join. We met the next morning armed with a map and some Thai Baht, ready to explore.

A quick tuk tuk ride later we were at the Chao Phraya river, from where we would sail on down towards Wat Pho, also known as the Temple of The Reclining Buddha.

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After negotiating with the man selling the boat tickets (and I’m certain we were ripped off, but no amount of bargaining would get him to lower the price!) we had our own little boat to take us up the river.

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Cycling Central Park, New York!

One of my latest trips took me to the wonderful city of New York, in the good old USA! I still can’t decide if I love NYC or am not too bothered about the city, but since it was just a 24 layover this time I wanted to make the most of my time there.

The weather forecast was looking great – a “cool” 33 degrees, compared to an average of 47 in Dubai that’s the perfect temperature! We departed Dubai around 2 in the morning, so not the best time to be awake. Luckily that meant our passengers were just as tired as we were, and the majority of them slept for a large portion of the flight. After 14 hours (with a 2,5 hour break to sleep in the crew bunks) we finally touched down in JFK, ready for some exploring!

Due to the time difference it was still morning, but by the time we navigated the terrible traffic in the city it was around lunchtime when we finally arrived at the hotel. Myself and one of the other business class crew, Bradley, decided to hire biked and cycle around Central Park.

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The weather was perfect, although I perhaps should have thought to bring some suncream! We found a place offering bikes for 20 dollars for the day, so were soon sorted out with a ride.

There is a huge bike path that’s as big as a road that goes all around the park, so we followed along with the crowd and cycled wherever we liked the look of.

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