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

August Roster & Some Exciting News

My roster for August has just been published, so I thought I’d share it with you guys as I usually do!

I don’t have any new destinations next month, however I’m happy as I got a couple of flights that I bid for. Even though I’m actually at the bottom of the bidding seniority, somehow it seemed to work in my favour!

So in August I’ll be flying to:

  • LGW (London Gatwick)
  • HKG (Hong Kong)
  • BKK (Bangkok)
  • ZRH (Zurich)
  • LHR (London Heathrow)
  • HKG (Hong Kong)
  • LHE (Lahore – turnaround)
  • BKK – HKG – BKK (Bangkok, shuttle to Hong Kong and back, then back to Bangkok)

I requested Bangkok so I could get a good massage – yes, that’s what my life has come to, bidding for flights just so I can get a massage! 😉 I also asked for Hong Kong so I could catch up with my lovely friend and ex-flatmate Kirsty, who I haven’t seen in a while. I actually can’t remember what else I bid for, but it’s a pretty standard roster for me with good flying hours (and only one turnaround!).

In other exciting news … I’m moving up to First Class! I had my assessment yesterday and received an email this morning letting me know that I’d passed! Hopefully I won’t have to wait too long for my training and then I’ll be working in first class instead of business 🙂

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

A trip to Harvard & Boston

So as you may have read in my previous post, I recently got back from a lovely 30-hour layover in Boston. I was originally rostered to fly to Singapore but since I had very low hours last month due to having short-ish flights and some leave, I decided to swap to get my hours up a bit.

I visited Boston once before, in January, when I was on reserve. It was freezing and snowy but still sunny, so I took the hop-on hop-off bus and explored the city. This time I was determined to visit Harvard university, as I ran out of time on the previous trip.

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After arriving at the hotel, most of us arranged to meet for dinner at 7. Since there were a couple of hours still to kill until then, I debated whether to have a nap or not, but I knew that if I did I’d sleep right through til 4am! Instead I took my time getting ready, then made my way down to the bar and met with one of the girls from economy. Finally a few of the other crew showed up, and we made our way to a seafood restaurant called Legal Test Kitchen. We had the table booked for 13 of us, but in the end only 6 showed! Slightly embarrassing…but that’s precisely why I didn’t take a nap, or I would have missed dinner for sure!

The next morning myself and one of the other crew met at 8:30 to head over to Harvard. I grabbed a coffee from the Starbucks inside the hotel, and we walked the 10 minutes or so to South Station to take the metro.

It didn’t take long to reach Harvard, and although it’s not entirely clear which direction to head when you step out of the train station, we soon found the main university buildings.

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A day in the life: long-haul flight

Most of my posts here on The Dubai Diaries are all about my layovers – what I get up to, if I go out sightseeing, where to eat and the likes. So I thought it was about time I did another post (click here to see the last one I wrote) detailing a bit more of my actual job, since that’s the reason I get to travel so much! It may seem like I spend all my time exploring new places and trying new food, but I work hard to get to the destination!

In fact, Emirates was just announced as the World’s Best Airline 2016 by Skytrax! That certainly makes me very proud and happy to be part of such a global brand.

I recently came back from Boston, and since long haul flights are a bit different to normal for us cabin crew, keep reading to find out why.

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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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Eating my way through Bologna

My second trip to Bologna this month was equally as lovely as the first. My initial thought had been to visit Florence, as it’s only just over 35 minutes on the high-speed train, however I decided not to venture there on my own and instead made it my mission to have spaghetti bolognese in Bologna!

The rest of the crew was eager to explore, since none of them had visited the city before, so we decided to head up the two towers again.

But first – pizza!

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I’d barely eaten anything on the flight in anticipation of all the delicious food I’d be having in Italy, so before we climbed up the almost 500 steps I grabbed a slice of pizza to fuel me up!

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