At the beginning of the month Emirates Airlines began running its three-cabin twin-deck “super-jumbo” A380 flights to Jeddah, offering 14 private suites in First Class, 76 in Business Class, and 427 seats in Economy four times a week to Dubai. Research from the World Travel and Tourism Council, which expects annual travel and tourism revenues in the region to increase by 89 percent over the next 10 years to be worth some US$279 billion by 2016 alone, may explain the demand for numbers, but it is the style factor that explains the luxury, for Gulf visitors to Dubai are sold on the superlatives that define many of its attractions: the biggest, the tallest, the most advanced, the most expensive. According to Sheikh Ahmed Bin Saeed Al-Maktoum, Chairman and Chief Executive of Emirates Airlines and Group, the introduction of the A380 will help meet “growing passenger demand using one of the most efficient, quietest and greenest aircraft ever produced”, while Ahmed Khoory, Emirates' Senior Vice President of Commercial Operations in the Gulf, Middle East and Iran, says it will ensure passengers “have greater access to flights whilst enjoying the distinction of traveling on the world's largest and most heralded aircraft”. Jeddah now joins a list of A380 destinations including Sydney, Auckland, London, Bangkok, Toronto, Seoul and Paris, and the airline, which currently has seven A380 aircraft in its fleet, has a further 51 on order. In the aircraft itself, the upper deck is divided into 14 First Class “private suites”, each with reclining seats and a range of mod-cons, including a 23-inch touch-screen television, wardrobe, and an adjustable massage system. Passengers can also reserve time in one of the two onboard Shower Spas. The aisles display a design recalling the décor of grand ocean liners or intercontinental trains of former times, in keeping with the retro-future feel of Dubai's most prominent architecture. The 76 places in Business Class are not so much seats in the traditional sense, but resemble rather a complete self-contained games console unit. Seats are fully reclining to two meters in length, the longest legs stretching out fully beneath the touch screen in front, and the staggered interlocking layout of window seats also means that no one passenger has another seated in front. The automatic massage can be switched on as travelers negotiate the array of electronic entertainment devices offering hundreds of TV and movie channels and games, and it would seem that only the absence of a steering wheel is keeping Business short of being a whole new concept in air travel - Spoilt Teenager Class. Being spoilt, however, does not mean you have to feel guilty, according to aircraft manufacturers Boeing. The Airbus A380, which made its maiden flight in April 2005, is touted as “the most environmentally advanced aircraft in the sky”, burning up to 20 percent less fuel than the world's current next largest aircraft and more fuel-efficient than a small family car, using as little as 3.1 liters per 100 passenger-kilometers. The 75g of CO2 per passenger-kilometer constitutes almost half of the European emissions target for cars manufactured in 2008, and noise levels are almost half of those generated by a Boeing 747-400 on take-off, keeping it well within EU standards. Flying from Jeddah every Monday, Tuesday, Saturday and Sunday evening, the A380 – huge, clean, technologically advanced but with a nod to the past – provides visitors with a mode of arrival and departure in keeping with the rest of their stay, adding more superlatives to the list of photo opportunities that greet them on the Gulf shores of Dubai itself: the world's tallest building, the ski slope, world-renowned shopping facilities, and a host of public events held across a city linked up by the recently inaugurated metro that efficiently whizzes past one landmark after another. __
