Historic day for Emirates! Their brand-new Airbus A350-900 is making its first ever commercial flight, heading on a short hop to Dammam, Saudi Arabia right now. This is the first Emirates flight in nearly a decade that isn’t operated by an A380 or a Boeing 777, a huge milestone for the airline!
Next up, it’s flying to Bahrain on the 28th and Kuwait on the 31st before starting regular services to Edinburgh in a few days.
Cool to see! These are supposedly crew familiarisation flights (with tickets available). The official inauguration is set to be EDI on Jan 3rd afaik
True! The plane appears to be almost full according to seat alerts, and it’s crazy to think how many of these passengers are making history in the aviation industry without even knowing, or planning for it at least! They announced those flights early this week, and swapped the B777s for the A359s!
So it’s a crew familiarisation flight with seats available? So I expect the crew won’t be top notch then. Would there be executives on board or just normal people who want to go to Dammam because it is flying under the normal callsign for that route.
Yes, it’s a crew familiarization flight, but it’s operating like a normal flight, and it’s bookable! Most of the passengers were just regular people who booked a trip to DMM on a B77W. Then earlier this week, they decided to use the A350 on a few short-haul routes instead.
They’ve announced Bahrain and Kuwait up next, and I’m guessing one of these will have people who specifically booked for the A350, unlike the DMM flight, which pretty much happened last minute.
Honestly, this EK A350 inauguration has been a total mess. It was supposed to start with Bahrain in September and then switched to EDI in December IIRC, then EDI In Jan, but now they’ve thrown in these last-minute short-hauls, so the people who paid to be the first to fly on it won’t have that.
It’s flying to Kuwait on the 31st, which is where I live, but they literally chose the worst time possible. A 7AM flight.😕
Yeah, the inaugural has been a mess. I’ll be flying on the 350 in the coming days, so expect a full video on our YouTube channel!
Yeah they were meant to restart the EDI route with the A350 after their absence but they have restarted it but with the B77W.
Oh wow, that’s awesome! Can’t wait for the video!! 🔥 Hope you have an amazing flight!
Actually, it wasn’t the B77W they resumed it with, but rather an outdated B77L! Imagine booking on the A350-900 and instead getting an old B77L!
This also happened to the Bahrain flight lol, a B77L.
They only recently switched it to the refurbished B77Ws with the new 1-2-1 Business and Premium Economy, which is a huge upgrade!
Emirates has really fumbled this amazing opportunity.
I thought their B77L’s had the new refurbished interior as well.
@AviatorVJ Only in business class unfortunately, In economy it still has the old 2007 seats, but with the new seat colors.
B777-200LR
And here’s the B777-300ER that they are flying to EDI now for comparison, it’s night and day!
To be honest I’ve travelled on Emirates numerous times and their old seats are comfortable, in fact the last flight I took with them which was last year was in the old cabin. They are going to retire the B77L soon so there’s no point in refurbishing it.
Thanks for the comparison though.
