I’ve already blogged about our best flight ever, the Emirates A380 from JFK to DXB, but this post is about the Emirates lounge that we visited beforehand. I thought it was one of the better lounges I had ever been to, and it was my first experience ever boarding directly from a lounge!
Our day started pretty early that morning, and we weren’t running on too much sleep. Due to weather in both SFO and JFK, our United P.S. flight to JFK was a few hours late, getting us in after 1AM. We spent the night at the Radisson JFK Airport, which was just fine, and we had a chaeuffer pickup at 6:15AM.
Speaking of chaeuffer pick-up, I think this is a very cool complimentary perk of Emirates First / Business class service. They include a complimentary luxury car service to the airport as well as to your destination when you land. Once your reservation is ticketed, you can actually just log in on the website and manage the locations right there. The day before our flight, I got a call from the car service in New York confirming everything. It was just a short ride to the airport, and our journey was about to begin!
Check-in was quick at the dedicated first class kiosk, we got our boarding passes, and we were on our way to the lounge!
It was a bit of a hike to the lounge, but we made it there with plenty of time to spare before our flight. The gentleman who worked at the entrance of the lounge was extremely friendly. He asked us if it was our first time using the facility. We told him it was, and he told us that it was an “honor” to have us, and he asked if he could give us a tour. Of course!
He showed us around. There is a LOT of seating in this lounge. The lounge never felt full at all, not even half full, unlike a lot of the United Clubs I frequent. There’s a separate dining area in the lounge for the buffet. We were there for breakfast. In hindsight, I probably should have eaten less, knowing that I had a huge multi course meal coming my way in just a few short hours, but oh well, I was hungry.
Katy and I sat down at the dining area near the buffet, and some attendants came by to ask us if they could get us anything to drink. While it’s officially a buffet style “serve yourself” facility, the attendants were proactive in seeing if we wanted more food or if they could bring us anything. The service was appreciated, and it helped make the experience special.
The options were plentiful and unique. You could get the standard breakfast items like orange juice, pastries, bacon, etc. They also had more interesting things like eggs benedict in miniature dishes, french toast, mango smoothies, green smoothies, and more. I also felt the quality of the food was quite high. The croissants were warm and flaked away in your mouth, as opposed to having to tear it with your teeth like the rubbery crap you can buy in bulk.
We had a great breakfast, and we took a seat to pass some time before boarding. We mostly spent the time catching up on last minute work e-mails, sending notes to our family, etc, before we embarked on our 12+ hour journey all the way to Dubai!
We had a couple hours to spend in the lounge, and I would say that’s plenty. I mean if you HAD to spend a longer amount of time there for a layover or something like that, there are worse places to be stuck, but unlike the Emirates First Class Lounge in Dubai, this is not a destination as much as it is a great spot to kill a couple hours. Boarding soon commenced, and we got to experience boarding from a lounge for the first time!
