The Dubai Diaries
My life as a flight attendant in the Middle East!

Exploring Port Louis & Grand Baie, Mauritius

I’ve just got back from a lovely week away celebrating my 25th birthday in Mauritius, with my boyfriend and his family. Even after visiting quite a number of times, there are still areas of the country I am yet to discover. So we made it our mission one day to explore the capital, Port Louis, as well as some of the north of the island.

We set out in the morning towards Port Louis, which as you can probably guess from the name, is a port full of beautiful boats.

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We strolled past admiring the yachts, and wondered how much the one that was for sale would cost. Far too much, I’m sure!

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October Roster

First of all my apologies for the lack of posts this month…I’ve been flying a lot but have mostly just been relaxing and taking it easy on my layovers, so I have nothing much to post on here!

Generally I like to post plenty of pictures from my trips, so I don’t think it’d be of much interest to only show you pictures of my breakfast and not much else! 😉

I’ve only got 1 more flight left this month til my leave starts, and then I’ll be heading to Mauritius the first week of October to celebrate my birthday! After my leave I have flights to:

  • MUC (Munich, Germany)
  • BKK (Bangkok, Thailand)
  • SFO (San Fransisco, USA)
  • First Class Upgrade Course (5 days back in training college!)
  • KBL (Kabul, Afghanistan – turnaround)
  • BCN (Barcelona, Spain)

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I’m surprised that I’ve actually managed to get quite a number of flying hours what with my 5 days leave at the beginning of the month and my first class upgrade towards the end of the month. I also have a string of 4 days off that I bid for to go to a wedding, but my boyfriend didn’t get the days off so we will have to wait and see if we’ll be able to attend.

I actually got a couple of flights that I asked for – Munich, to see my younger brother, and Barcelona because I love the city! In fact I bid for Barcelona before deciding to go away with my best friend Lucy at the beginning of November – 3 guesses as to where we’ve decided to go! I was originally rostered 2 but I swapped the first one for a Bangkok that somebody sent me. I’m always happy to go to Thailand!

I’m still undecided as to whether or not I want to do the San Fran flight – 16 hours is such a long time to be on the plane! We’ll see if anyone wants to swap it but it’s not looking very promising.

Very excitingly I have finally been rostered for my upgrade to first class! It’s been exactly 2 years now that I’ve been working in business class, so I’m ready for a change and hopefully I’ll enjoy it. Stay tuned!

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

48 Hours in Phuket

I was lucky enough to be rostered a dreamy trip to Phuket this month. Most of our layovers are 24 hours, and a few of the longer US flights are 48 hours. However, sometimes there are these lucky occasions where you manage to get a 48 hour layover for a quick and easy 6 hour flight!

And when I say easy…it really was! We had 4 passengers in business class (with a capacity of 42 on the 777) so we were practically fighting to take them their meals, just to have something to do! We flew overnight, so after dinner they went to sleep, and we kept ourselves awake with cups of tea and coffee.

Once sunrise arrived, we started our approach into Phuket, admiring the gorgeous scenery below.

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Unfortunately the 777 door windows are not quite as photogenic as those on the A380, haha! Nevertheless it was still a pretty view of the beaches and islands.

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Breakfast in Dubai, Lunch in Melbourne, Dinner in Auckland

I’ve just got back from a 6 day trip down under – a night in Melbourne, quick hop to Auckland for 24 hours, then back to Melbourne for another day. The last time I did this trip was back in January, when I got it on my reserve month. I normally tend to avoid multi-sectors as I always end up a bit jet-lagged, but I couldn’t say no this time as I was going to see my cousin Sarah!

She was away in New York on exchange last time I came to Melbourne, but luckily this time around she managed to get some time off work so we could hang out!

The trip over was nice and uneventful, and after a 12,5 hour flight we landed into Melbourne at around 6am.

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I headed to bed for a couple of hours, and soon enough it was time to get ready to meet Sarah for some late breakfast. It was a pretty grey and miserable day, 12 degrees and a drizzle of rain. Just what I needed after a constant 40 degrees in Dubai!

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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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