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

A Flying Visit To Vienna

I was recently selected to part of a special set of crew – taking the A380 on it’s inaugural flight to Vienna! Since I joined Emirates, I’ve been trained to fly on the A380 as well as the 777, and since being part of the business class team (coming up to 2 years now) I fly more on the A380 than the 777. She really is huge (519 passengers at maximum capacity, as well as 26 crew members) but most of us love it, and there’s something a bit special about having a real-life bar onboard!

I could feel the excited atmosphere as soon as I arrived in the briefing room, and it was quite a few of the crew’s first time to Vienna. Having lived in Austria for 6 years before moving to Dubai I’m quite familiar with the city, and unfortunately none of my friends or family were able to make it this time, so I planned to have a relaxing layover in the city.

We were just about ready to take off, when we were informed of a water leak in the first class galley, which resulted in us returning to the gate so an engineer could come onboard and fix it. After an hour and a half delay, we were finally off!

The flight went nice and smoothly (after the initial hiccup!), and upon arriving in VIE, we were greeted with a water canon salute, a tradition for inaugural flights.

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Since my jumpseat was located at the back of the aircraft, it was more of a trickle by the time it got to us, but nevertheless it was pretty cool to watch from the onboard cameras.

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July Roster

After an absolutely delightfully easy roster this month, it’s back to regular flying in July. I’m at the bottom of the seniority rotation, and should have been on reserve, but somehow managed to get a pretty normal roster.

On an exciting note, I’ve been put on the inaugural A380 flight to Vienna on the 1st of July! If you’ve been reading my blog for a while you may remember that I used to live in Austria before moving to Dubai (for 6 years, although not in Vienna) so I am excited to be heading back! I get rostered plenty of flights to Germany and Switzerland being a German Speaker, but very rarely to Vienna!

Other than that I’ll be heading off to:

  • VIE (Vienna, Austria, the inaugural A380 flight, I’m hoping for a water canon salute when we land!)
  • SIN (Singapore)
  • DEL (Dehli, India, a shortish turnaround)
  • ZRH (Zurich, Switzerland)
  • DOH (Doha, Qatar, one of the shortest turnaround flights we have – about 45 minutes each way!)
  • ZRH (Zurich, Switzerland)
  • BHX (Birmingham, UK)
  • JFK (New York, USA)

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Only 2 turnarounds this month, and relatively short ones which is not too bad. I even have one new destination, Birmingham, which I was rostered to fly to a while back but never ended up going (I can’t remember why, I think I swapped it or must have been off sick!). Any suggestions for what to do there are most welcome, as I’m fairly sure most of the crew just go shopping!

My JFK flight is one of the tougher ones, as it’s around a 13-14 hour flight each way, and only a 24 hour layover! I’ll still try and get out and do as much as I can, especially as it should hopefully be nice and warm there.

I’m looking forward to another month of flying, and of course I’ll keep you updated in case of any swaps!

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

Sunshine & Aperol in Bologna, Italy

It was an early start for my flight to Bologna, and we left Dubai on time at 9am. The cabin was less than half full in business class, which made for a nice and easy flight, and we landed into sunny Bologna in the early afternoon, ready to explore!

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It was the first time for all of us, since it’s a relatively new destination for Emirates, so a big group of us set out to see what the city has to offer.

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Tapas in Barcelona

Barcelona is by far my favourite city in Spain (although I’ve only visited a couple) and when I saw it on my roster I was very happy! I actually lived in a town called Calella, which is around an hour from Barcelona, in 2010. I did an internship there in a hotel, and on lots of our days off we would hop on the train to Barcelona and hang out there for the day.

After a super easy flight which was less than half full, we arrived in the beautiful city!

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Our hotel is just opposite a large shopping mall, and with all the January sales going on, who could pass up an opportunity to visit the home of Zara!

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London with Lucy!

The day before yesterday I got back from a layover in London! Well, technically we stayed in Heathrow, but you know. As soon as I saw LHR on my roster, I arranged to meet up with my best friend Lucy. The last time we saw each other was when she came over to Austria before I moved to Dubai, so over 7 months ago! 

The flight was one of those horrible night ones, leaving at 2:30am, which means being at the airport at half past midnight. It’s always tough trying to get sleep before a flight like that but I managed a couple of hours and then got ready and made my way to the airport. The flight itself wasn’t too bad, most of the passengers were asleep which is always good! 😀 We landed around 7am and by the time I’d got to my room I had about an hour to get some sleep before I needed to leave to meet Lucy. I got the Heathrow Express (50% off for airline crew – nice!) and then the tube to Liverpool Street. Just as I got off the train we spotted each other! 🙂

We decided to get the underground to Oxford Street to do some shopping. First stop however, was a much needed coffee!

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Our main aim was to get to Primark, so we walked down Oxford Street and spent a good while and way too much money in there. Any time I get a London flight I try to stock up on skin coloured tights for work in Primark as they are at least twice the price in Dubai!

After a good couple of hours shopping we hopped back on the underground to have a little walk around Covent Garden and some lunch. After lunch we decided to walk down past Somerset House and cross the river Thames. We were being very touristy and taking lots of pictures all day! 😀

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We wandered down towards the London Eye and sat on the grass relaxing in the sunshine and people watching. The weather was gorgeous, sunny and hot. All too soon it was time to go, so we walked past the London Eye along the Thames to the underground, making sure we got a few last pictures in. We said our goodbyes and headed separate ways. However if all goes well I will be flying back to England on leave in August, when we will get to see each other again! 🙂

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Thanks so much for coming down to see me Luce, even if we only had a day together it was awesome! 🙂