Emirates unveils a new livery for its aircraft

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• BJ says:

  17 Mar17 March 05:58

  The story about APD is not so much the increases but the continuing stupidity of it. The only reason they get away with them is due to pressure on passengers time or passenger ignorance. While in the past I always favoured getting from A to B in the least time with a decent schedule, I now increasingly feel like I’d rather spend around £200 on a cheap flight and hopefully half decent hotel to some European city that often offer more competitive fares, anyway and enjoy up to two days before my journey proper begins. With budget fares and budget hotels around for about £50 each there is even a case for doing this with an economy flight provided these are also more competitive exEurope than exUK although I have never checjed if they are.

  • Vit says:

    17 Mar17 March 07:55

    @BJ yes now that we are in and out of Oslo often we start planning some bkk trip exOslo already. And with work i could tag along the hotel stay and ferry-flight for additional saving too. QR do have some great business class deals for early next year. I think we will look at it more seriously now that we have used up our 241 vouchers by summer next year.

    • BJ says:

      17 Mar17 March 08:10

      On another blog recently I saw OSL-BKK-AMS in Qatar J for about £1300 I think, and with generous rules too. Liked the look of it as I can picture Loganair to Bergen, train to Oslo and an overnight in Ansrerdam being really worthwhile icing on the cake.

      • Vit says:

        17 Mar17 March 08:17

        You can also take Norwegian Shuttle for like £50 one-way or less if you book well in advanced from EDI. That’s what I normally do as SAS has been really on and off with their flight schedule during winter to the Scottish capital. Or yes you can just take Loganair from ABZ to OSL as well.

        • BJ says:

          17 Mar17 March 09:00

          Thanks, isn’t Norwegian a MAX? I would like to go to Begen as I’ve never been and thanks to Rhys’s review I now know there is a Bonvoy option.

        • Vit says:

          17 Mar17 March 09:19

          Haha I knew that word will pop up! No it is a -800. Been around much longer since late 90s early 2000s. It is part of the B737 Next Gen.

      • Paul says:

        17 Mar17 March 10:13

        These deals are few and far between so snap them up when available. My wife is being sent to overseas shortly for work her company have paid near £4500 for her return flight which is inflexible.
        I have decided to join her and paid £2100 ex BUD. We did suggest to her firm that she could do this too and we’d make a weekend of it before and after at our expense. They said no! The stupidity of bean counters never ceases to amaze me

        • Alex Sm says:

          17 Mar17 March 10:40

          It’s always easier to part with someone else’s money

        • TGLoyalty says:

          17 Mar17 March 12:39

          Not really stupidity. It’s usually for insurance and operational reasons. It mind sound nice for you to “save” them some money but they might be getting a rebate on the £4,500 at year end and also it’s to stop others taking unnecessary business trips to then start holidays etc

          You should check your own insurance policies in regards to flights without protected connections not leaving from your origin country etc

  • RussellH says:

    17 Mar17 March 11:14

    Surely you are not suggesting that aviation should not be taxed at all?

    While we still wait for international agreement on ending the tax break to help a new and innovative type of transport get off the ground (pun intended) so that VAT can be levied on airline tickets, APD makes perfect sense.

    • BJ says:

      17 Mar17 March 15:49

      What I would like them to do is scrap the third runway at LHR, allow a second runway at LGW, scrap APD at all airports except LHR and LGW hike APD at LHR and LGW to compensate for losses elsewhere, not allow any airline to hold more than 25% of slots at any airport. By doing so they could allow regional airports to flourish and increase competition resulting in both greater choice and lower fares.

• AS says:

  17 Mar17 March 06:20

  I flew into Doha earlier in the week and insurance wasn’t mentioned at any point. I was assuming my AMEX plat insurance would be ok in light of the changes in this article, but whether it is or not, I still know not as I was never asked about insurance.

• Rhys says:

  17 Mar17 March 09:01

  Searched all over for these yesterday!

• Paul says:

  17 Mar17 March 09:34

  So in other words the Qatari stealth arrival tax has failed and is quietly withdrawn.

  I flew to AUH two weeks ago on QR ex CPH. Great flights and the Al Safwa lounge again stunning. Not so stunning was the state of my luggage on arrival.

  AUH staff refused three times to issue a PIR thus beginning a very frustrating experience trying to deal with this. It took days to be accepted and despite providing receipts and all required documentation, they offered half the value and so began the email haggle. When I rejected this they ignored me and now I am home have passed it to LHR to resolve. Customer care are fast to reply but utterly useless. Indeed they make BA look professional!

  So, the blogs are right. QR are fine only when it all goes well.

  • babyg says:

    17 Mar17 March 10:08

    Flew through last weekend – found the Al Safwa poor, other than the dessert better offers with a the AM North lounge. No idea what is going on with QR F&B at the moment but its very hit and miss.

    And yes QR in the sky=great.. QR on the ground=useless

• sayling says:

  17 Mar17 March 09:47

  Never really understood the hype… often riddled with inaccuracies, their posts were often very self centred and a bit “look at me”

  • Rob says:

    17 Mar17 March 09:57

    There never was any hype 🙂

    I have seen multi-million dollar figures quoted for the accumulated losses over 5 years. The only surprise is that it lasted this long given that the parent company is ruthless about cutting off dead wood (see recent CNET firings etc).

  • lumma says:

    17 Mar17 March 11:22

    The cringey selfies on the YouTube thumbnails were enough for me to avoid them

• vlcnc says:

  17 Mar17 March 09:50

  From a design perspective (as a designer) this is a backward step from Emirates. The general trend for sometime has been towards flat graphics which looks a lot neater and is easier to replicate and make everything uniform. I think this looks messy – Emirates had a timeless livery, no reason to mess with it.

  • Rob says:

    17 Mar17 March 09:55

    The ‘flat’ trend may be over. If you use fashion as an example, Saint Laurent, Burberry and Berluti were the ones who moved to ‘flat’. We did the same with our redesign in 2020. Burberry has just dropped ‘flat’ from SS23 and is now back to swirly fonts. Saint Laurent is also bringing back, at least on clothing if not as the brand image, the Y S L overlaid image that the perfumes never got rid of.

    ‘Flat’ does makes sense though in the online age. It’s why, for eg, the BBC moved to square rather than sloping letter blocks, because it displays better online.

    • vlcnc says:

      17 Mar17 March 10:14

      Flat is definitely not over – it’s not about whether a font is swirly or not, you can have flat logo and it be ornate (Emirates font has never been modernist for example). It’s also not whether you overlay flat elements over a photograph, that is entirely possible with a flat branding scheme. It’s the gradients and digital textures that are out of fashion as a trend which is what Emirates has done here with the tail. Also flat graphics aren’t just a trend, they’re also generally timeless way of doing things and why some companies don’t need to change their core branding (not ancillary elements which constantly evolve) for decades without it looking dated.

• Swifty says:

  17 Mar17 March 10:17

  email rec’d about 10% off iberia gift cards, can that be used on rewards flight fees?

  • Marcw says:

    17 Mar17 March 14:07

    Nope

• Michael C says:

  17 Mar17 March 10:20

  I think many people will be feeling a bit livery by the end of St Patrick’s Day…

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