After landing in Cebu the passengers bound for Angeles/Clark were allowed to remain onboards, whereas the passengers bound for Cebu disembarked. As soon as they were off the plane, a cleaning crew came on board, and did a (very quick) clean of the empty seats.
With the Radisson Blu just across the street from the terminal it was a quick walk to the terminal, and another 5 minutes walk to the check-in area as it was (of course) located at the far end of the terminal. Check-in itself was quick, and we just narrowly managed to put our jackets and winter shoes in the suitcases before they were sent off. From here we had fast-track for security (which I found to be the rudest I have encountered in my travels so far), and then we had time for a quick drink at Starbucks before heading to immigration. Oslo Airport is apparently not built for international travels, and the line at immigration was huge, it probably took us 90 minutes to get through – I am glad we were early for our flight!
Date or review: May 23, 2019.
The lounge in Manila was quite hard to locate, there were no (easily visible) signs pointing in the right direction, but after asking some of the terminal staff for directions I was finally able to locate it, upstairs from the main terminal at the end of a corridor. (It is located in Terminal 3, level 4, just above gate 114).
Keep on reading!
Boarding was already starting as we arrived at the gate, so we could skip most of the queue and were quickly showed to our seats, again the centre seats together, seats 11 DEF. As I said in the previous post , the middle seat was quite cramped, so convinced the kids to swap with me, so on this flight I got an aisle seat, whereas Marcus would take the middle seat.
So, leaving the house at 17:00 we quickly arrived at the airport, where check-in was quickly completed after passing through the first set of security screening. At check-in we also got a voucher for our free stop-over in Dubai, we had been allocated Le Meridien hotel, which is just across the street from the terminal, so I decided we would have to use that as well, as long as we arrive on time. We then proceeded to fill in immigration forms for the kids, as they have Philippino passports, and then we had to clear immigration, before there is another security screening, and then we are finally in the boarding area.
After killing a little bit of time in the terminal, we were quickly starting boarding, and we were greeted by the door by one of the cabin crew, and showed to our seats, which were 7 D E F. Emirates operates with 7 seat abreast in Business Class on their Boeing 777s, in a 2-3-2 configuration, so this suited us well so we could sit together.
We had already spent summer holiday in Norway this year (trip report here), and since it is far and expensive to travel there I was just planning on bringing the kids to Hong Kong for Christmas. However, I did put my leave dates into google flights and kept an eye on the price, and when I found some surprisingly cheap tickets with Emirates in business class I decided to bring them to Norway for Christmas, and hopefully see some snow :
So this was the most disappointing part of the trip, when I made the booking the flight showed with Q-suites, but about 2 weeks before departure I got an email saying there has been change of equipment, and looking at the seat map I realized we were to fly in a Boeing 777 with the ‘old’ business class.
