India Trip 2013 - Part 2

.....Continuing from my earlier post India Trip 2013 - Part 1

Dubai Airport Experience:
Where were we?? Yes, at Dubai airport.  So, we had just landed in Dubai airport at Terminal 1 (United Airlines terminal).  We land at 3:40 pm instead of 4:40 pm ....which is a 6 hours wait for the next flight :(.  As we got out of the plane, my dad's wheelchair was waiting for him.  The person pushing my dad's wheelchair told us to take the escalator and go up to the 2nd floor and wait near transfer desk while he was going to go another route to bring the wheelchair by an elevator.  We thought it must be close by so went and waited for them near the transfer desk C even though that's not the transfer desk for our next flight.  5 minutes go by and no sign of my dad.  I kind of worry that we didn't have any contact with him and thought if we took the wrong route  but just then I see him and take a sigh of relief.  We all head down to the lower level to get to the transfer desk E.  For those wondering what these transfer desks are for, well, if you are connecting to another flight in Dubai, you have to go to the transfer desk of your airline in order to get the onward boarding passes and then continue with your journey.  For us, our onward flight was going to be with FlyDubai Airline and that airline took off from Terminal 2 which is located couple of miles from the Terminal 1.  For our onward journey, we had to go to transfer desk E (this is the desk you need to be at if you need to catch an onward flight from terminal 2) to get our onward boarding passes.

Our ticket was issued by United Airlines and it was 1 PNR where FlyDubai was also on that single ticket.  One advantage of this was that we did not have to collect our baggage at Dubai.  It was through checked-in from our first leg of the journey and we were only going to get it at the final destination.  We just had to give our baggage tags to the agent at the transfer desk so that they made sure to transfer our luggage for us.  Another advantage was that since we were flying with United Airlines and then going on FlyDubai, FlyDubai did not weigh our hand luggage since it was a connecting flight!!  This is a very important piece of information to know for people who are connecting to FlyDubai because their hand-baggage policy is very strict where they only allow 7 kilos of hand luggage and if it's more than that, you have to pay for it per kilo rate!!

We get to the desk and I give the agent behind the desk our passports, temporary FlyDubai boarding passes (that we got from UA at the first airport) and baggage tags.  Even though we had valid 10 years Indian Visa, it took them half an hour to issue us FlyDubai boarding passes.  There was something that the agent wanted to confirm on the Visa and he was having hard time reaching someone at the embassy.  It kind of concerned me because I knew we had all the necessary documents for travel but God knows what else they wanted to confirm.  Finally after 35 minutes of waiting the agent got the info they needed and gave our passports back.  They did the exact same thing with all the other passengers who were traveling to India with us where it took them really long time to issue boarding passes to each of those passengers.  Oh well, we were ready to go to terminal 2.  We waited for the shuttle to come and once it came, only then the agent provided everyone with their onward boarding passes.  The shuttle took about 15-20 minutes drive to go from terminal 1 to 2.

Once we were at Terminal 2, we had to go through another security screening, and then off to our FlyDubai gate.

Terminal 2 of Dubai airport:  Here is little insight into the Terminal 2 of the Dubai Airport.  The terminal is pretty small!!! It is a 1 floor building which has 6 gates and 1 big duty-free shop.  Due to being small, it was very crowded and it's hard to find seats.  The space started to open up a little as the flights took off and people left.  I had read that there is a free wi-fi at the terminal which I tried to connect to, but no luck!  I was able to connect to the wi-fi, but couldn't connect any of my iphone apps and it kept complaining that there was no connection.  That was a big bummer!!  With no wi-fi and over 5 hours of wait time, there was nothing for me to do but roam around in the duty-free shop and rest at our gate.  The only interesting thing out of the terminal 2 was that you could see Burj Khalifa (the tallest building in the world) from where we were sitting at terminal 2.  It was kind of far but you can spot it easily with its unique design of the building.

Alrighty!! Well, my journey is not over yet, but if I continue writing any longer, there is a possibility of the post getting very lengthy and boring!!  Sooooooooo, with that, I conclude this post and give you our FlyDubai Airline experience in the next post.  See ya :)