Getting to Dubai & Dubai Airport by sue_stone
Dubai is so close to the UK you could almost go there for a long weekend! A flight from London is only 6.5-7.5 hours - a breeze if you are used to 24 hour flights to Australia as I am ; )Around 80 different airlines currently fly into Dubai, making it an important transport hub in the Middle East. Our first visit to Dubai was a short one - just a couple of hours spent in the airport, on our way to Sydney. That time we were flying with Emirates, Dubai's international airline. On our first 'proper' visit to Dubai, in Dec 2007, we flew from London Heathrow with British Airways. As mentioned, the flight was very manageable at around 7 hours.
Upon arrival, although it was around 1am local time, we faced long queues at passport control. Yawn. At least that meant only a very short wait for our luggage. Exiting the airport after 2am, I was astounded by the number of people there to meet arrivals - the majority seemed to be holding signs from various hotels/tour operators. We were supposed to be collected by our hotel, and spent several minutes scouring all of the signs looking for our names or the hotels name. Hmph..... in the end I had to ring the hotel and they were most apologetic, apparently the car coming to collect us had broken down. Oh well, we jumped in a taxi (there were plenty of them) and the hotel reimbursed us on arrival.
Our return flight back to London didn't depart until 3am. We arrived at the airport around 12.30am and loved the fact that there was hardly any queues at all for check-in and security. Once through to 'airside', the duty free shops were packed full of shoppers, and we joined the throngs - I can never resist duty free lip gloss and chocolate.
The only negative thing about the airport on the departure side was that there were hardly any seats to sit on, unless you went through to your depart lounge. We had no choice but to sit on the floor for a while at around 2am, as our gate hadn't opened yet.
