Emirates joined an elite club of airlines flying to five continents yesterday by taking the second man to set foot on Moon on its non-stop maiden flight to New York.
Astronaut Edwin 'Buzz' Aldrin followed mission commander Neil Armstrong into the history books when they stepped on the lunar surface from Apollo XI on July 20, 1969.
And yesterday, Colonel Aldrin made another long flight aboard an Airbus A340-500 from Dubai to New York with a team led by Maurice Flanagan, vice-chairman and group president of Emirates.
Madeleine Albright, the former US Secretary of State and a member of the board of the New York Stock Exchange, joined the colonel and flew to JFK Airport after attending the seventh graduation ceremony of the American University of Dubai, where she delivered the keynote address.
This time, instead of a cramped Apollo seat, the colonel flew in the luxury of Emirates' First Class Suite with unrivalled standards of in-flight comfort. After sampling the facilities, he said: "I haven't seen anything like it. It's very different from the first class cabins I have flown in on other airlines and is a remarkable feat of engineering and luxury."
First class customers in this ultra-long-range jet relax in $175,000 suites with flat beds and privacy doors, and can phone cabin crew in the galley to ask for meals to be served at their seat whenever they wish.
Every passenger in every cabin enjoys unprecedented service and attention: an innovative cabin lighting system helps reduce jetlag and customers in all classes can relax with more than 500 channels of video and audio entertainment.
"From today, Emirates is carrying customers to five continents," said Flanagan. "Our remarkable new A340-500 may not fly them to the moon, but it will reach any place on earth with no more than a single stop. These unique standards of onboard comfort will enable us to remain market leaders."
The new link offers excellent connections via Dubai for customers travelling from North America to the Gulf, Africa, the Indian subcontinent and Asia. Further flights between Dubai and the United States, Canada and South America will follow soon. Thanks to a network spanning 76 cities in 53 countries, one of the world's youngest fleets and a track record of ongoing innovation, Emirates has made headlines as one of the fastest-growing and most successful airlines.
Meanwhile, as Dubai International Airport expands to handle 60 million travellers annually, the city expects to attract 15 million visitors a year by 2010.
Gulf News
