February 2019: Dubai Planning – Flights

Dubai would be the farthest away from home we had traveled to date. I had been to India (from San Francisco, even) for work many years ago, which is a longer trip, but as a family our previous longest single flight was nearly 8 hours from Zurich to Boston. This trip was sure to eclipse that.

Flight Options

While Boston doesn’t have as many international flight options as New York airports, I’m always amazed at how many different airlines it serves. There are even two Middle Eastern carriers, Qatar Airways and Emirates, that flight from Boston.

Using my trust Google Flights website, I found there was a daily non-stop flight from Boston to Dubai on Emirates which is based in Dubai. There were a few other lower priced options that had stops in Europe or Asia. Turkish Airways was one that was several hundred dollars cheaper, but after our experience with a long layover in Zurich on Swiss on our trip to Rome in 2018, I felt the extra cost of the nonstop would we worthwhile. Turkey is also in the midst of opening a new airport and moving traffic from the old one to the new one and I didn’t want to risk having our flight be during that transition and risk being canceled or complicated because of it. Reviewers also have a lot of good things about the experience flying with the Middle Eastern carriers, even in economy. We’d see if the economy experience was any better than the experiences we’d had with US and European airlines. Admittedly that isn’t necessarily a high bar.

Booking

While we knew we wanted to spend 5 days at the desert resort we had found to take advantage of our 5th night free when staying on points, we also wanted to spend time in the city. I spent time pricing out flight options that would give us 3-5 days for the city portion of the trip. Given how far away we were going and the prevailing prices of the flights, we decided to leave on a Thursday night and return on a Monday making it a 10 night trip and allowing 5 nights in the city and 5 in the desert resort.

I used Ebates to book the flights through Travelocity. Unlike with our Christmas cruise, this would only net us a few dollars back as there isn’t the same type of margin on airline tickets. Still, it was free money!

After booking the nonstop flight I logged into the Emirates website and found our flight record using the Emirates record locator I had received from the Travelocity transaction. I was able to see the seat map and select our seats. It’s always important to verify your ticket went through when buying with a online travel agent. ASAP. You have much more leverage within the first 24 hours of purchase than you do afterwards.

The plane we would be flying was a Boeing 777 with seats in a 3-4-3 arrangement in economy. Towards the back of the plan there are a few rows that are 2-4-2 and we could have booked two rows of two seats, but those seats were charged a hefty premium. We considered it, but it was simply more than we were willing to pay, even for such a long flight. It would have almost doubled the ticket price.

We instead chose 4 seats in the middle at the front of the economy section. While we still had to pay for these seats, it was much more reasonable and the kids seat selection was discounted. For the “twin” seats we had been considering the kids cost the same as the adults.

We were able to reserve the same seats on the return leg as well. The cost foe these seat assignments was less than the cost of one of the twin seats in one direction so we felt fine making that compromise. While the middle seats are not our favorite, they work well when we’re traveling as a family like this. The kids don’t take up much space and if we put the arm rests up I find I can spread out more than normal and it’s not bad at all, even for a 12+ hour flight!

With flights booked now we needed to narrow down the hotel and other details of the stay!