Memory of my very first flight ages me around 10 years old. We flew from Milwaukee to Los Angeles on Midwest Express, the now defunct airline that was known for its classy service, china plates, real silverware, and freshly baked chocolate chip cookies onboard. My love affair with travel and planes was born. Fast forward many decades later, and I’ve had so many incredible experiences onboard airplanes. For those that don’t know, I worked in the airline industry for over two decades, which also afforded many unique and amazing opportunities (and lots of stories flying standby!). After all these amazing experiences, two have always eluded me: flying First Class Emirates on an A380 and experiencing the Singapore Airlines Suites. Andrew and I are incredibly grateful that we got to knock the first of those two off the list!

When we were planning this trip, we used points to book almost all of our flights (and my lifetime retiree flight benefits for the remainder). We booked Business Class on Emirates out of JFK. Yes, Emirates fly out of MCO but I’ve done that service and it’s on a 777 – I convinced Andrew to fly to NY first, so we could fly on the A380 – a first for both of us. After arriving to NY, we headed to T4 to check in at Emirates. We asked if we could use points to upgrade to First, and there were seats available for us to do so! We were so excited! The experience was phenomenal. We started in the Amex Centurion Lounge, since Andrew hadn’t been to their speakeasy before. Then we headed to the Emirates Lounge. It was a nice experience. The food was good, but I have to highlight their asparagus soup with croutons – it was so divine that I had to have a second bowl. I couldn’t quite put my tongue on one of the spices but I’ll be working to try to recreate it.

We boarded the flight from a jet bridge for the upper deck. All First and Business Class seats are on the upper deck with Emirates and use a different jet bridge and boarding door, which was a fun, unique experience. The amenities started the moment we were taken to our suites (we were 1E and 1F, so our pods could be combined by lowering the wall between them). Too many luxuries to name as we explored out suites, but I particularly loved the incredibly comfortable pajamas and slippers we were given, and so many types of chocolate covered dates! Andrew was simply giddy with joy by the fact that we get to have this experience. I reminded him that one of the reasons I’ve always wanted to fly on the A380 on Emirates is because of the spa and shower – more on that later.

They started to pour us champagne, but apologized that they could only serve Veuve on the ground – the Dom would start being poured once we were in the air. Umm, okay, twist our arms. The flight departed a little late – almost midnight – but we were so excited that we didn’t want to sleep. We decided to get the most out of the experience, partake in the full dinner experience and stay awake for awhile. Later, we would sleep a few hours, wake up, take our shower, then land. Despite being tired the following day, we made the right choice. After the obligatory warm nuts, we both started with the caviar service and it did not disappoint. I had it with the 2013 Dom Perignon and Andrew sipped his 2018 Dom Rosé with it. Andrew had broccoli miso soup and I had the chicken consommé, which was so very flavorful. We both had the tandoori sea bass – he with a 2016 French blanc and me with this incredibly well paired 2014 Grand Cru Burgundy. Andrew ordered the cheeseboard for dessert. I was so full that I said I’d have something later maybe. I sampled each cheese and it was paired with a port that was older than Andrew – and it too was the perfect balance between sweet and savory (the blue cheese in particular was incredible with this 1981 Tawny Port).

The rest of the aircraft was incredibly quiet. We knew we wanted to experience Emirates’ famous A380 Lounge & Bar so we decided this was the perfect time to do so. We walked through the entire aircraft cabin through Business Class to the rear of the upper deck. We both had an Old Fashioned and chatted with a few crewmembers while hanging out in the Lounge. They took our picture behind the bar with an onboard Polaroid they use for Customers. There was even more food in the Lounge – off a menu, or a plethora of snacks, sweets, and pastries. We could see light starting to shine through some of the windows and really started to feel our exhaustion – time to take a cocktail back to our suites and lay down for a few hours. Those that have been in a lie-flat seat on a redeye know just how valuable they are. It won’t ever match your sleeping experience in your favorite comfy bed, but it sure does wonders on an airplane. What was great about our suites was not just the length of the beds, but also the width – we had quite a lot of space (First Class is a 1-2-1 configuration across the width of the entire A380, so you can imagine the width of each suite).

I set an alarm on my iPhone so that my Apple Watch would vibrate me awake about 3 hours before my scheduled shower time. I had breakfast (Shakshouka with poached eggs and all the accompanying cast of food characters) and more champagne. I woke Andrew up about 1 hour before his scheduled shower time.

Each First Class customer gets to take a hot shower before landing – at 35,000 feet – and it was everything you would hope it would be (especially after being onboard for 12-13 hours, and we had started our travel day over 24 hours earlier – so refreshing!). Andrew mentioned in his post the heated floors in the lav. I’ve never been in such a spacious aircraft lavatory in my life. And it was probably the “cool”-est 5-minute shower of my life (but really the perfect temperature)!

Both of us refreshed (but tired from a long day), we started to wake up. We landed within an hour. We were happy to be in Dubai (the first leg of this part of the journey). While sad this phenomenal experience was coming to a close, we were happy to move on to the next part of our trip – a quick layover in Dubai (provided by Emirates!). As I collected all my belongings, I made an error in my lack of sleep & stupor’ed brain. I somehow took our travel charger adapter kit out of my backpack to shift things around, and somehow put it aside but didn’t notice. The next morning, I discovered that I misplaced it and briefly was upset at myself. This is the first time I’ve ever forgotten something onboard an aircraft, so at least it was a pretty good track record. I’ll have to repurchase this international adapter set because it’s such a great one (if you’re in the market, check it out on Amazon: Ceptics World 13 Piece Set). We had 7 interchangeable adapters that we were planning on using over this 2-month trip. Now, we’ll have to buy adapters as we go along to each country. While upset with my rookie mistake, we’ve focused on the incredible experience that we had and we’ll figure out charging as we go!

If you haven’t tried an international First Class experience, start saving those points – so entirely worth it! And, if don’t have a travel bucket list, start one; or view ours for ideas right here on this travel blog.

Until next time,

Jeff