Several months before our trip to Sri Lanka, Sam and I made the decision that we wanted to fly business class. Why? Well, Sri Lanka is about as far away a country from California as you can get. We wanted to hit the ground running and didn’t want to waste time feeling jet lagged. It is a 15 hour 40 minute flight to Dubai and then another 4 hour 30 minute flight from Dubai to Colombo, the capital of Sri Lanka. Being able to completely lay down in a bed on board the plane would mean less jet lag and overall, a more comfortable way to arrive in the country. There are a few airlines that make this long haul flight but the only one we wanted was Emirates. Knowing that flying Emirates would likely mean excellent service, fantastic food, a beautiful plane/seat plus a few bonuses (access to the unparalleled Business Class Lounge at SFO, Dubai and in Colombo as well as chauffeur service provided to Business and First Class passengers, lounge and bar in the back of the plane and hotel accommodations for transiting through Dubai); the decision was easy. Emirates it was.

Is it cheap? No.

Is it worth it. OH YES.

Here then is my review of what it is really like to fly Emirates Business Class to Sri Lanka.

Once you have purchased your business or first class ticket, you can book your chauffeur. For us, the drive to SFO from our house is awful. The airport is beautiful but I hate the drive. Having a car and driver pick us up meant our vacation began early. We were dropped right off at the International Departures curb and simply walked in. There was no line to check in, where we got our chauffeur info for the driver in Dubai and hotel voucher information (if you are laying over in Dubai for six hours or more and are business/first class Emirates will put you up in a hotel. NICE).

Last year we both did TSA Precheck. I did Global Entry and Sam did something else but it gives us precheck on all of our flights, again making the airport experience juuuuuust a little easier. Once we got through we headed to the lounge.

Having access to a place with spacious seating, lots of outlets for charging, clean bathrooms and showers and a full spread of food and drinks again makes the airport experience so much better. We were able to relax and prepare for the first 15 hour 40 minute leg of our journey. By the way, the food was great and the service was really good.

Our flight was on an Airbus A380, which is a double decker plane. First and business class are on the top deck and economy is on the lower deck. From the SFO lounge all we had to do was walk down a hallway to our own top deck gate and boom we were on the plane.

I’m never particularly excited to fly anywhere; flying is the means to the end. But Sam and I were both pretty excited about this flight. We had been very deliberate about the exact seats that we chose for this A380 flight. Instead of sitting together in the two middle seats (business seats 1-2-1 configuration) we opted for the seats along the right side of the plane. These are all window, all aisle access and have a lot more storage than the middle seats. Additionally you have the feeling of being tucked away from everything. I sat in seat 9K and Sam in seat 16K. There are two cabins of business class with the second cabin being closer to the lounge/bar in the back. We didn’t want to be as close to the lounge in case it got loud/busy so we opted for the front business cabin. If you are looking at flying this A380 I highly recommend the seat situation we planned.

As soon as we got settled in our seats (or pods as we took to calling them), an FA came around with drinks (I ordered a virgin Mojito and then a fresh squeezed OJ) and a bowl of warm nuts. They also dropped off the menu for the flight.

This menu contained choices for a three course meal as well as all of the hot and cold items that would be served in the lounge at the back of the deck. SWEET. I was very focused on making sure I carved out enough time to sleep (I wanted 7-8 hours) and was already worried about how I was going to do that PLUS soak up all of the fun on board! Happy troubles to have.

FA’s also handed out Bvlgari amenity kits. I ended up keeping one for myself and gave the other one (from our return flights home) to Sophie. These were packed with great smelling lotions, perfume, dental kits, and brush/mirror. They also handed out eye masks, socks and over ear headphones. The quality on everything was great.

After eating I watched Beyonce’s “Homecoming” (which was legit amazing) and then watched “Crazy Rich Asians” on my seat TV. Sam and I met up in the lounge (which we had ALL to ourselves) to watch the Golden State Warriors game live while eating lemon cake at 40,000 feet. This was for sure one of our favorite memories of the entire trip.

At this point we were both starting to get sleepy. We had taken off at 4:30 PM PST and it was approaching bedtime. I headed to the bathroom to change into pajamas and get my bed into flat bed position.

An FA came and put a mattress pad onto my now flat bed. Sam asked for two and had an even cozier sleep; I learned my lesson and asked for two pads on our return flight from Dubai to the US two weeks later.

I looked out my window before pushing a button to lower the shades and noticed strange looking clouds. It looked like they had lines in them or like they were mountains. OH MY GOSH they were not clouds! We were flying over the Arctic Circle and I was staring down at ice caverns as far as the eye could see. SUPER COOL!!!!!

Then it was lights out for me! I took a sleeping pill about an hour before going to bed to help me really relax and sleep. I put on my eye mask (even thought the cabin was dark with little twinkle lights above to simulate stars) and put in some earplugs. I slept for seven hours and woke up completely rested and comfortable! Being able to completely lay flat while flying is such a game changer. I felt refreshed like I had enjoyed a regular night of sleep in my bed at home. That right there makes these seats in this worth the money. We enjoyed some breakfast and I started pulling myself together to get ready for seven hours in Dubai before our next flight.

As we began our decent into the United Arab Emirates I could see one building clearly much taller than any others around it: the Burj Kahlifa.

Landing in a plane as large as the A380 felt super smooth. Once on the ground, we had a seven hour layover before taking off for Colombo, Sri Lanka. We left our bags with Emirates at the airport and they arranged for a car to take us to the Dubai Mall and Burj Kahlifa. At this point it was about 8:00 PM.

Once we had spent time in Dubai we headed back to the airport, grabbed our bags and headed to the business class lounge. I had heard that this lounge was the nicest in the world and it certainly lived up to its reputation. We actually took showers and completely cleaned up right there in the lounge. Afterwards we had some dinner (at this point it was midnight) and prepared for our next flight.

  Our second flight was a little under five hours and for this one we flew on a 777. These seats were still very comfortable but did not go completely flat, more like 90% flat at an angle. The flight was not full, we had great food and were very comfortable. As this was a smaller plane than the Airbus there was not a lounge/bar in the back of the plane and this was all one level.

I know that the 777 has recently had a major upgrade and we were hoping to be on one of those jets however that didn’t happen. Oh well. I decided not to eat the meal we were served as soon as we took off because it was almost 2 AM and I opted to just go to sleep. Instead, I had breakfast before landing and because we were both so well rested, clean and fed we were able to hit the ground immediately. We never got tired during our first day in Sri Lanka and went to bed at a normal bedtime in our new timezone. That is the first time I have ever been able to do that. It was amazing!

Coming home we hit a few snags with Emirates. The first was beyond their control: our flight out of Sri Lanka to Dubai was cancelled due to very few passengers (understandable given the lack of tourists post-bombing). They contacted us right away and booked us on a new flight that connected through the Maldives. HOWEVER. They made a mistake on their end and messed up the layover time we would be in Dubai from seven hours (which was the original time) to 21 hours…which was NOT what we wanted. It took over half an hour at the airport in Colombo to fix the mistake and I didn’t even have a proper boarding pass for the Dubai to SFO connection until I actually got to Dubai (also not awesome). At that point they had erased all of our seat preferences and could not get them back for us. The flight from Dubai to SFO was fairly full so it took a lot of pushing to get something close to what we wanted, still in business class of course. As a result our longest leg home while still in the cabin we paid for was not spent in the best seats that we had chosen. If you are paying as much money as it costs to fly this way, you want everything to be exactly the way you want it…so this was a bit of a smudge on an otherwise perfect Emirates experience. We still slept and ate great food; we also had a driver provided by Emirates for our ride home from SFO.

All in all, flying with Emirates was just about everything I could have hoped for. The service was certainly a cut above what we have experienced on other airlines. The actual plane and seats were by far the nicest we have experienced; soft product (amenity kits, bedding, etc.) was first rate and the food was the best I have eaten while flying. The benefits of flying business class with flatbed seats, beautiful airport lounges (hello, a shower before a long flight is the greatest thing ever), chauffeur service to and from the airport, hotels provided for transiting through Dubai and an overall excellent flying experience made us feel that we got our money’s worth. Being able to hit the ground fresh and ready for action after such a long flight was something we had never experienced; that was worth the money as well.

Travel, regardless of how you do it, is taxing. You could be on a private jet and would still have to cover the 9000+ miles from California to Sri Lanka. It’s tiring, it’s long and the older you get the harder it can be. That said, would I fly business class on Emirates again? You bet I would, especially on that A380. It is possible that after being home only 48 hours I was already looking up routes to future destinations flying on Emirates :). This was the perfect way to both begin and end our 16 day journey from California to Dubai to Sri Lanka to Maldives to Dubai and back to California. I’m an Emirates fan for life.

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