Day 19: Tue 28 Nov 17 - Kochi to Dubai to Brisbane

Up at the very ungentlemanly hour of 1am for a 4:30am flight from Kochi to Dubai. The taxi was spot on time with the trip to the airport taking about one hour. Within 15 minutes I was sitting in the departure lounge having a nice coffee. The airport is compact, immaculately clean, efficient and powered completely by solar. It appears quite new. There were only six flights listed on the board for departure so it not a huge hub. The 777-300 pushed back from the gate at 4:32am; I hope the next two flights are this timely.

A pleasant 20 deg on arrival at Dubai, extremely busy at 7am, as expected. Took 45 minutes in the bus to get to the terminal from the parking bay, just an indication of how big the airport is and it wasn’t helped by the bus having to wait for two A380s to taxi past. Out of Dubai on schedule at 10:25am on the big one, A380.

There were 100 empty seats on the flight so before sitting down I asked the hostie if I could move (had all full seats in my row) and she took me down the back to three empty seats and said “they’re all yours”. Everyone was on board but we just sat and sat, a “runway issue” apparently. Ended up departing over 45 minutes late. Landed in Brisbane spot on time at 6:40am though.

The strange thing about these first two flights is that I flew for over three hours in the wrong direction Kochi to Dubai. Then for the first few hours to Brisbane the flight nearly retraced those lost three hours. In hindsight I probably should have flown Singapore Airlines which would have gone via Singapore and therefore been more direct. Although I do like Qantas / Emirates and I did this trip using points.

Kochi international airport

Getting off in Dubai

Transfer bus

A380 Dubai to Brisbane


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