I travel regularly on the Emirates to Dubai. More and more often there seems to be an issue with the airbridge on the stand that is allocated to Emirates. On last trip, aircraft was parked on remote stand on departure since tug was broken. On arriving back, we waited one and half hours to disembark as it was too windy to connect airbridge - after over an hour, ground staff decided to point a/c nose in to terminal next to Eastern lounge. On leaving the terminal, it was just a normal blustery day - not exactly gale force. Bearing in mind, many pax had been travelling for 24 hours, everyone was truly fed up and commonts included "shambolic. incompetent, lack of planning and above all, over rediculous health & safety". Not a very good advert for inbound pax. This is certainly not the first time I have experienced delays connecting the airbridge. Would be interested to hear response from anyone from Ops as this is not a good advert for our airport.
On the plus side, EK flights are almost always 95% full by my experience. Surely not long till we get 777? My bet is that Qatar Airways will start a service to Doha in next 3 years. Not sure what a/c type though.