PHOENIX PHIL
AH ambassador
I thought I'd pass along my experience with flying Emirates on my trip last week to South Africa. For the most part I have no complaints about Emirates and in fact found flying this airline to be very good. My flight legs took me from Phoenix to Seattle on Alaska Airlines which code shares with Emirates. From there we flew to Dubai with the flight path more/less going over the north pole and intercepting if you will Dubai. From Dubai on to Joburg.
The Emirates flights were on Boeing 777-300's. There's just a bit more legroom on these planes. Not huge, but enough to make a difference even in cattle class. The personal entertainment system had a very large selection of movies, television shows and music. Food was better than what I normally get and was actually quite good. The part that really separates Emirates from others are the flight attendants. They actually treat you like a person, very friendly and helpful. I was quite impressed with how they paid special attention to parents with young children as well as the kids themselves. As a parent who has traveled with young children, I appreciate that. But all passengers should as a happy baby and not a crying one is good for all.
I had for the most part no problems with traveling with firearms. The first step in ensuring this is to declare your firearms no more than 30 days in advance of your flight. I recommend doing this 29 days before. You can do this online at:
https://www.emirates.com/ae/english/help/firearms/declaration-form.aspx??catid=bgfa&frl=/baggage/
This is a pretty painless process. After completing the information, you will virtually immediately receive an email response back with a PDF document that you should print out and have with you when you travel. This email will also tell you that they will contact you as soon as they have approved your travel with firearms. I will say about 2 weeks or so passed before I got this email and I started to make phone calls. But sure enough about a week before we were to leave, I got that approval email. Again, I'd recommend having that email available when you travel.
The second step in ensuring this all goes smoothly is if you have a connection from an airport that Emirates does not fly out of like I did, only check your firearms to that airport. So in my case I picked up my rifle case and ammunition box in Seattle and took them to the Emirates check-in counter. Now here's the good part. Emirates is expecting you and your firearms. When I got to the check-in counter there was someone there waiting and expecting me, someone who knew what they were doing. They did require weighing my ammo which I knew would not be a problem since I had weighed it myself. Once this was done they gave me a finalized version of that document they sent me when I declared my firearms and we put that in the rifle case. The same nice lady walked me to TSA who subsequently sent the firearms to the plane.
If you don't have a connection to make and start your trip from an airport in which Emirates flies, I would expect the same level of service as I just described. You just obviously won't have to do what I did flying from here to Seattle.
So then we flew to Dubai feeling confident that our firearms and ammunition were taken care of. We had a roughly 4 hour layover in Dubai. When we went to boarding I was held up for a few moments as it flagged on their system when they scanned my boarding pass that I was traveling with firearms. So what's the hold up all about? They wanted to ensure my firearms were on the plane before I got on the plane! A bit of a minor inconvenience but I see it as a positive that they were tracking this to ensure the firearms were traveling as expected.
And sure enough the rifles made it to Joburg as expected.
Now for the return flight. Once again when we checked in at the Emirates counter at Tambo, someone was waiting on me there. This was a very reasonable lady. At first she was going to weigh my ammo and I said no problem. But I also told her that I'd been there to hunt and assured her the ammo would weigh less than when I started my trip. She put 1 and 1 together and agreed, so she didn't bother to weigh my ammo. So off from there to SAPS and the rifles and ammo were on their way.
I presume due to my 9 hour layover in Dubai, I did not get stopped at boarding regarding my firearms. I'm sure they had easily made it on to the plane with that long a layover. So on to Seattle we went.
This is where it got a little stupid. Once we had cleared immigration we went downstairs to the baggage carousels where we had one bag to get in addition to the rifle case and ammo box. While there an announcement came over the PA calling us to meet someone there. I found the nice lady in short order and once again she was there to help us with the firearms and ammo. Turns out they already had them at the baggage inspection station. We went over there and went thru the serial numbers check with the CBP gents, who were really nice guys and asked about my hunt. So we were done with those guys with no issue. Here's where it gets stupid.
The nice Emirates lady had handed us off to an equally nice gent from Emirates. Once we were done with CBP, the Emirates guy tells us he will send the rifle case and ammo box up to carousel 1 in the main terminal. What for, why not just send it on to Alaska Airlines I ask? Answer was because they don't have a baggage agreement with Alaska Airlines when it comes to firearms.
So we get on a train which takes us to the main terminal and go to carousel 1. About 10 minutes later another gentleman with a cart shows up with the rifles and ammo box and down to the other end of the terminal we go to check these in with Alaska and then to TSA again. Not a huge deal, but we were running a bit tight on time. Fortunately the check-in counter was virtually empty and TSA line was short. We ended up at our gate about 15 minutes before boarding was originally schedule to begin. Alas our flight to Phoenix was delayed by over an hour. But if that had not been the case and IF our Dubai-Seattle leg had been ever so slightly delayed, I'm not sure we'd have got to our flight home in time.
Overall I was happy with the experience on Emirates. Although my original flight plans had a 3 hour layover in Dubai on the return leg. Only after my reservations were made did they change the flight times such that I had a now 9 hour layover in Dubai. They sent me an email to notify me of this but failed to change my Seattle to Phx leg to account for this change. I called Emirates about it and was polite but let them know that I wasn't happy about the change and especially with not taking the time to understand how that affected the final flight. The gent I talked to was apologetic and made the appropriate changes and also redid our seat assignments to give us bulkhead seats on 3 of the 4 Emirates legs.
Hope you find this information helpful.
The Emirates flights were on Boeing 777-300's. There's just a bit more legroom on these planes. Not huge, but enough to make a difference even in cattle class. The personal entertainment system had a very large selection of movies, television shows and music. Food was better than what I normally get and was actually quite good. The part that really separates Emirates from others are the flight attendants. They actually treat you like a person, very friendly and helpful. I was quite impressed with how they paid special attention to parents with young children as well as the kids themselves. As a parent who has traveled with young children, I appreciate that. But all passengers should as a happy baby and not a crying one is good for all.
I had for the most part no problems with traveling with firearms. The first step in ensuring this is to declare your firearms no more than 30 days in advance of your flight. I recommend doing this 29 days before. You can do this online at:
https://www.emirates.com/ae/english/help/firearms/declaration-form.aspx??catid=bgfa&frl=/baggage/
This is a pretty painless process. After completing the information, you will virtually immediately receive an email response back with a PDF document that you should print out and have with you when you travel. This email will also tell you that they will contact you as soon as they have approved your travel with firearms. I will say about 2 weeks or so passed before I got this email and I started to make phone calls. But sure enough about a week before we were to leave, I got that approval email. Again, I'd recommend having that email available when you travel.
The second step in ensuring this all goes smoothly is if you have a connection from an airport that Emirates does not fly out of like I did, only check your firearms to that airport. So in my case I picked up my rifle case and ammunition box in Seattle and took them to the Emirates check-in counter. Now here's the good part. Emirates is expecting you and your firearms. When I got to the check-in counter there was someone there waiting and expecting me, someone who knew what they were doing. They did require weighing my ammo which I knew would not be a problem since I had weighed it myself. Once this was done they gave me a finalized version of that document they sent me when I declared my firearms and we put that in the rifle case. The same nice lady walked me to TSA who subsequently sent the firearms to the plane.
If you don't have a connection to make and start your trip from an airport in which Emirates flies, I would expect the same level of service as I just described. You just obviously won't have to do what I did flying from here to Seattle.
So then we flew to Dubai feeling confident that our firearms and ammunition were taken care of. We had a roughly 4 hour layover in Dubai. When we went to boarding I was held up for a few moments as it flagged on their system when they scanned my boarding pass that I was traveling with firearms. So what's the hold up all about? They wanted to ensure my firearms were on the plane before I got on the plane! A bit of a minor inconvenience but I see it as a positive that they were tracking this to ensure the firearms were traveling as expected.
And sure enough the rifles made it to Joburg as expected.
Now for the return flight. Once again when we checked in at the Emirates counter at Tambo, someone was waiting on me there. This was a very reasonable lady. At first she was going to weigh my ammo and I said no problem. But I also told her that I'd been there to hunt and assured her the ammo would weigh less than when I started my trip. She put 1 and 1 together and agreed, so she didn't bother to weigh my ammo. So off from there to SAPS and the rifles and ammo were on their way.
I presume due to my 9 hour layover in Dubai, I did not get stopped at boarding regarding my firearms. I'm sure they had easily made it on to the plane with that long a layover. So on to Seattle we went.
This is where it got a little stupid. Once we had cleared immigration we went downstairs to the baggage carousels where we had one bag to get in addition to the rifle case and ammo box. While there an announcement came over the PA calling us to meet someone there. I found the nice lady in short order and once again she was there to help us with the firearms and ammo. Turns out they already had them at the baggage inspection station. We went over there and went thru the serial numbers check with the CBP gents, who were really nice guys and asked about my hunt. So we were done with those guys with no issue. Here's where it gets stupid.
The nice Emirates lady had handed us off to an equally nice gent from Emirates. Once we were done with CBP, the Emirates guy tells us he will send the rifle case and ammo box up to carousel 1 in the main terminal. What for, why not just send it on to Alaska Airlines I ask? Answer was because they don't have a baggage agreement with Alaska Airlines when it comes to firearms.
So we get on a train which takes us to the main terminal and go to carousel 1. About 10 minutes later another gentleman with a cart shows up with the rifles and ammo box and down to the other end of the terminal we go to check these in with Alaska and then to TSA again. Not a huge deal, but we were running a bit tight on time. Fortunately the check-in counter was virtually empty and TSA line was short. We ended up at our gate about 15 minutes before boarding was originally schedule to begin. Alas our flight to Phoenix was delayed by over an hour. But if that had not been the case and IF our Dubai-Seattle leg had been ever so slightly delayed, I'm not sure we'd have got to our flight home in time.
Overall I was happy with the experience on Emirates. Although my original flight plans had a 3 hour layover in Dubai on the return leg. Only after my reservations were made did they change the flight times such that I had a now 9 hour layover in Dubai. They sent me an email to notify me of this but failed to change my Seattle to Phx leg to account for this change. I called Emirates about it and was polite but let them know that I wasn't happy about the change and especially with not taking the time to understand how that affected the final flight. The gent I talked to was apologetic and made the appropriate changes and also redid our seat assignments to give us bulkhead seats on 3 of the 4 Emirates legs.
Hope you find this information helpful.