Onboard the Middle East's SECRET National Airline
welcome to dubai the place that i should not have been today um and let me explain we arrived in yesterday josh cahill and i got in on the uganda airlines a330 neo from entevie yesterday morning at like 4 00 am i was going to go off and get my next flight and josh was going to stay here in dubai and we headed through to the baggage claim went to get our bags and stood and waited um and waited and waited some more because some the bags didn't turn up two hours later by the time the bags did show up um the checking for my onward flight had closed and i missed it entirely so i ended up stuck here in dubai overnight so now it's time to head to the airport and get the flight i should have been on yesterday all right checking out please thank you my stalker is still here he's still stalking me around what are you what are you still doing here i don't know i like it so much well it's a bit creepy isn't it um yeah um a very good rate okay um yeah i'll take a taxi with you let's go [Music] uh terminal one domino one yes please let's get going let's get going yeah exactly two different uh two different airlines yeah you're going one way and i'm going we were both flying from the same terminal at dubai today terminal 1 so we grabbed a taxi across to the airport thank you sir lovely to meet you thank you bye-bye bye-bye oh it's blowing up who knew it got hot in dubai yeah yeah too after awesome fight saying it's like worse when you have to wear pants if josh has to wear trousers today have you ever seen josh kate this is a very rare sight josh cahill wearing trousers um we'll explain why in a couple of minutes the black ones are that so we're going to say goodbye in a minute for the very last time we thought we thought we said last goodbye last time didn't we it is it is and um this man just can't get enough of me clearly and we're stuck together i'm a super fan is it that i can't get enough of josh because i ended up staying an extra night but so never mind um but yeah tell everybody where you're off to josh i am going to iran on mahan air on an airbus a310 so if you want to see what it's like to fly a sanction airline on one of the rarest planes in the world which is still in service check it out it's going to be amazing i'm so gel really jealous of that i'd love to get on uh i'd also like to fly through iran but yeah for british it's not as easy as it is for you germans you know you germans have never annoyed anybody in the history of exactly a peaceful country that's what we stand for exactly never cause any issues hence where you can go that's why you can go to iran and we're on the naughty list so um yeah no don't even get me started so yeah you have a great trip to iran man um and when we in the meantime are going off on mea on their a321 near because we're heading off to istanbul um stop in beirut with a stop in beirut yes so that would be fun won't it great journey great yeah beautiful playing but i don't want to give away too much no no no no no no no we don't like giving everything away early on in the video so we're um yeah it's gonna be a good day we're having a pl moment yeah we are gonna have a great fight today as well so yeah have a great trip josh um and i will too yeah and um well maybe maybe we will see each other again in a future video yesterday thanks for watching lovely time we had in africa it was a it was a fantastic yeah but probably by the time uh they have probably seen all the videos yeah exactly but if you haven't then check them out i'll pop a link up to the playlist on the screen so you can see them all very good right i'll go this way then you go that way see you later man bye at this point i thought i'd got rid of josh once and for all but i'm going through my footage afterwards i saw that he'd followed me to the coffee shop and got the feeling that he just couldn't get enough of me caffeine purchased it was time to go and check in for my flight to beirut hey good morning check in please fantastic thank you so much have a great day thank you all right all checked in look at that beautiful emirates a380 right behind me and heading through now to security to go and fly on mea to beirut all right through security time to find a lounge and see what there is here at dubai terminal one this was my first time flying from dubai is terminal 1 it's home to most international airlines at dubai that aren't emirates or qantas but to get to any of the gates you have to take this train from the main terminal it's a bit of a trek and can add 10 to 15 minutes each way to your connection so make sure you bear this in mind should you be on a connection with separate tickets here once i've taken the train it was time to find a lounge hello being a member of sky team mea use the sky team lounge here in dubai so welcome to the sky team lounge here at dubai airport terminal 1 and last time i was here i think was when i flew saudia a couple of years ago in 2020 from here so very nice lounge actually um not too bad at all very modern and light and airy and um yeah very spacious indeed and not many people here it's never been too busy when i've flown through here before which is quite nice um so yeah sit down grab a coffee i think and um wait for me flight [Music] oh and i finally got some duty-free a new toothbrush um to replace the one that the people in security people in either senegal or burkina faso took from me when i took that flight and they took my toothbrush out of my suitcase after i checked in i mean like the amount of stuff i've got in that suitcase i've got audio equipment microphones everything you name it no they didn't want any of that they wanted an electric toothbrush that somebody else had used um so i've been the entire africa trip using it the old fashioned way with the plastic one um often i mean ticket but um now i shall have fresh breath once again and a fresh mouth once again with my brand new electric toothbrush i cannot wait to be using that when i get to the other end of this trip all right then time to say goodbye to dubai and go and get on board the meaa a321 neo2 beirut my ride today was this beautiful aircraft delivered brand new just over a year ago now i don't know about you but i absolutely love mea's latest livery let me know what you think to it down in the comments all right so this is the beautiful mea a321 neo that's going to take me to beirut today looking forward to this a lot and they've been on my list for ages actually me a and i'm finally getting a chance to have a go on one and see what they're like so yeah let's go head on board and find out all right then time to get on board the mea middle east airlines a321 neo to beirut let's go hello how are you hello good welcome boy thank all right then welcome on board the mea a321 neo middle east airlines based over in lebanon in beirut um and um this is this is the latest aircraft in their fleet actually the a321 neo it's very very nice actually business classifies look at that leg room there in a lovely sort of 2-2 configuration you've got here um going on which is quite nice um it's a reclining seat i think not a flatbed um which is fine because these only do sort of the short flights like two or three hours um also not sure how long the flight to beiru is from dubai so we'll figure it out i guess whatsoever there's no screens or anything maybe they pop down from above um or out of the armrest maybe i don't know we'll have to see how that goes um later in the flight but um oh yeah there must be actually because there's a remote control just down here so there must be a um tv there we go tv pops out just here we'll have a look at that later um when we go through the ife but very nice so far um we're sitting here waiting to go from dubai for our flight up to beirut as the rest of the passengers boarded the aircraft it was just nice to be on board the cool air bus rather than in the insane heat outside i love the effect you get when you fly from hot countries with the air conditioning generating this steam [Music] we take off we're going to take you on a different kind of journey so listen carefully to the safety instructions eventually the doors were closed and we pushed back to begin our long taxi out to the runways here at dubai [Music] as we taxed it out i got to see josh's beautiful aircraft getting ready for departure to tehran don't forget to check out his video flying on mahanai i'll pop a link on the screen [Music] [Laughter] [Music] so [Music] [Music] our route today then took us along the gulf flying across saudi arabia jordan and syria before starting our approach into beirut flying time today was 2 hours 56 minutes cruising at 32 000 feet all right so airborne from dubai on the mea a321 neo the most bizarre experience ever literally the second the wheels came off the runway um down in dubai these monitors came down and just started playing adverts and um like the wheels weren't even up yet and they and then the adverts were playing all over it i mean this is like a national airline full service airline it's not a low-cost airline or anything so yeah that was interesting um anyway um we are airborne from dubai people are getting comfortable getting settled in by the looks of it um and yeah hopefully have a nice little ride up to beirut the adverts continued as we climbed to cruising altitude which is something i've found a little bit bizarre for a national airline at least and something that i've only ever really seen on low-cost airlines all right so about 10 minutes after takeoff the adverts have finally stopped um and i can have to get away in edgeways um it's very comfortable actually see loads of leg room and the recline is really good it's not a flatbed um but it's a very nice reclining seat it goes quite a long way back for a three hour flight like this not too bad at all really so looking forward to relaxing a little bit on this flight um i have to say it's time for the no philips new review all right time for an mea lou review onboard the a321 neo um pretty clean pretty nice nick quite a modern bathroom of course on the neo very tidy and clean indeed typical toilet two layers of bog roll a bit of a bin plastic seat belt signs things like that yeah pretty nice so far crew so far i've been pretty friendly it's been quite nice um we'll just come around i can have drinks orders for later on in the flight looking forward to that seeing what the in-flight service is like as well it's kind of pretty cool but yeah so far so good on our ride up to beirut that was the noel phillips blue review [Music] all right it's lunch time and the starters turned up we've got um i've gone for chicken today it's a choice of either shrimp or chicken for the starter and um obviously i'm off fish at the minute so um the chicken is for me let's give it a go that's really nice actually and not dry at all which is pleasant and a nice change for airline food yeah pretty decent all right main course has arrived it was a choice of fish um or vegetarian or what i've had which is the chicken and apparently it is a lebanese national dish and i'm going to absolutely butcher the pronunciation and i can't even remember what it's called would butcher have been i think or something like that my um lebanese and um my lebanese viewers will probably know what it is and i'll probably get slated in the comments for um saying that all wrong but some let's give it a go it's basically chicken um with um pasta little pasta balls and things that's quite nice chicken is delicious it's like a sunday dinner back home very nice oh and cheesy cheesy balls i suck on them that is really nice proper nice i'm really sorry if i mispronounced it or called it the wrong thing or whatever please let me know down in the comments or don't don't be too nasty please um yeah it's really nice lovely food and one thing i'm finding out about me is they do keep you incredibly well fed and we've literally not stopped eating since then the beginning of the flight and now it's time for dessert and i've gone for a banana cake with um nice little coffee [Music] all right it's time for the section of the video that i've started calling what's on tv and we are going to have a look at the in-flight entertainment system on the mea a321 neo let's have a look so it's sort of down here and see if i can pop it out it's pretty cool it's electrical you press the button and it moves it up and down look i'll just fold strong like that let's have a look welcome seat 60 49 minutes to landing in beirut let's have a look it's interesting not seen them this sort of style before in terms of the entertainment but um let's have a little look through all right so we've got some arabic movies there let's have a look new releases sing two 18 game matrix i've heard terrible things about that movie but i've actually seen it quite a few movies there though nice selection of movies uh tv shows and a few few tv shows there to get going uh documentary if you're interested in the bank of lebanon and their history you can watch it hour-long documentary on that but um yeah not michael petty personally um and um let's have a look what else we got a few games and stuff moving map what we got which moving map is it today voyager 3d panasonic's airshow map and it's basically the same as what we get up on the tv shows up there on the display up there but it's a little bit more interactive nice mea playing there circling around very nice it's good looking plain isn't it we can see where mecca is it's behind us oh and the good old command center view i love this view look at this look we've got ground speed air speed altitude distance from dubai outside air temperature headwind pitch and roll air speed heading like this really cool thing here so cool so cool yeah not about entertainment on this flight actually so remember a three hour flight that's pretty good keep yourself quite entertained i think um on this one after a couple of hours it was time to start our descent towards the capital city of lebanon beirut all right let's started our descent down into bay rooms um yeah this is going to be fun isn't it i'm not actually been to beirut before or lebanon and so it's going to be interesting flying in there seeing what it's like um can't wait to be on the ground and i'm out so 10 minutes i think as we fly over the desert of the middle east look at that view though wow i'm not gonna lie the scenery in this part of the world looked absolutely stunning from above the deserts gave way to mountains and eventually the mediterranean sea as we made our approach to rafikuriri international airport beirut [Music] we have just landed take care when opening the overhead bins as the contents may have shifted [Music] all right welcome to beirut in lebanon country number 80 for me um short stop today though here heading off hopefully find a lounge for my next ride to my next country let's go and check it out and now it was time to experience possibly the strangest transfer experience i've ever had at an international airport the office all right very strange apparently i've got to go to an office somewhere and they're going to have a look at my boarding pass and then i can go through security after that so i can find it ah hello transit yeah they sent me back here down there now yeah all right thank you see you hello transit yeah yeah thank you all right through the transit area here at beirut and i don't think they get that many transiting passengers here i'm honest it doesn't seem particularly well set up for connections although they do have a connections lane which is nice but it's a bit sort of ram shackle um and then they were quite curious because they haven't seen a blue passport before from the uk and considering we've had them for about two years they can't get that many british people coming through i guess um but it's interesting never mind we are airside now at beirut i'm gonna try and find a lounge to pass a couple of hours until my next flight beirut airport's pretty dark and dingy and there aren't that many places to sit fortunately the business class lounge here the cedar lounge more than makes up for the rest of the airport so then folks welcome to the cedar lounge here at beirut airport in lebanon home of course to mea who were flying on today and i have to say what an incredible incredible allowance is there's this massive spacious atrium area here um it's so bright and airy it's absolutely lovely and then on this side we've got these views here out over the action here at beirut international airports and all of the anya planes including the retro livery one right back there um absolutely beautiful airports and aside from the kind of strange transit experience down that little building site little dingy corridor thing but um other than that very nice indeed looking forward to having a bit of a bit of refreshment here a bit of a bite to eat and then we're on the next leg with mea i think on another a321 neo the next leg up to istanbul turkey [Music] one thing about this airport i've noticed is it's very very smoky and i mean like cigarette smoke there's smoking lounges all over the airport with the doors open um so the smell of cigarette smoke is like everywhere there's one like just behind me for instance um so yeah if you if you are not a fan of cigarette smoke well then you might not enjoy it here in beirut but um never mind um it's not too bad i don't mind the smell myself but um anyway i'm going to head downstairs in a minute i think because hopefully we should be boarding in the next sort of 10 minutes so um let's take our under and see if we can find the plane thank you bye-bye all right then let's go and see if we can find our gate for our flight over to istanbul [Music] it was time to find my way through the airport to find my gate this beautiful retro livery a320 was on the gate next to mine but um sadly i wasn't flying on it today [Music] business class were called for boarding right behind the wheelchair passengers i did have to try and stop people from pushing right past them though which wasn't brilliant it really frustrates me sometimes how impatient people can be [Music] welcome aboard thank you you're welcome i'm sorry it's okay don't worry all right then on board once again on the mea a321 neo not the same one we were on earlier that one's oh it might be actually i'm not sure um i'll check the reg but yeah very nice again very comfortable once more just like the previous one one thing i've noticed here actually with mea is people are so impatient when you're trying to board the plane um i was following this um odd lady you couldn't walk that great on the way down the jet bridge people were just barging past like pushing her out of the way to try and get past she's in a wheelchair like for goodness sake you're in that much of a rush you're gonna sort of barge in front of a wheelchair passenger trying it on board the fly so i'm stood there like trying to use my size to my advantage in trying to stop people trying to come past and i think i managed it a little bit but um goodness for me and very frustrating indeed and um we're all kind of on the same plane anyway so what is the point anyway never mind we're on board now next leg about an hour and a half i think over to um istanbul turkey [Music] ladies and gentlemen welcome on board may i have your attention please fasten your seatbelt to unfasten your seatbelt [Music] once again the ad started as soon as the wheels left the ground i was soon coming to realize that mea had more ads crammed in than an old phillips video the next flight then took us across the mediterranean crossing cyprus before coasting into turkey flight time was 1 hour and 30 minutes cruising at 36 000 feet [Music] we got a great view of cyprus as we flew right overhead my first time ever flying over this country all right so a beautiful departure from beirut there they've got some fantastic fuses we've turned out from their airports and headed out across the mediterranean sea and we've just crossed the northern tip of cyprus as well which is pretty cool never been to cyprus actually um it's a bit strange thing is it's like a typical holiday destination for brits and i've never actually been there um so it'd be nice to get there at some point i think but um today we make do with the views from 32 000 feet as we fly right over the top and have a good look down on them from above um so far so good with mea the airport in beirut is a bit strange and probably not the best but i have to say a lot of people have been telling me um even lebanese people apologizing for their national airline in the state that it's in and for the silly cabin crew and the state of the aircraft and i have to say so far it's been pretty damn good um the cabin crew have been downright brilliant to be honest especially on this fly they're so lovely so friendly um and understanding and it's just lovely and the customer service is just great as well they're coming around with drinks constantly always with a smile on their face and this aircraft is just so brilliant i mean just look a321 neo um so much legroom and it's quite nice down the back while it looks a bit as well personal tvs and all sorts of stuff there's wi-fi on board which we've not tried yet either like if that'd go in a bit on this flight but yeah by a large really impressed with mea they are far better than people give them credit for in my experience based on these two flights um the only issue seems to be really and i hate to say this but some of the passengers some of the passengers are a bit rude and they're not very nice to the crew or to other passengers in general really um but other than that the mea experience has been pretty nice so far right so it may only be an hour and a half flight but we still get a meal service on board and i think by the time they got to me there's only one choice left which is this um it is a resolve i think she said i'm probably butchering all these pronunciations it's beef basically um i'm not that hungry because i've put a big meal on the way over from dubai but um i'll certainly give it a go see what it's like i don't know it's just a bit like palmer ham or something like that that's all right that's a snappy thing so my flight on mea today cost me 720 pounds for a one-way business class flight from dubai to istanbul now compare that to emirates on the same route they were charging about 1500 pounds the cheapest alternative was royal jordanian they were still 1200 quid um and they were much older a320s than mea operate on their flights and that's the thing emirates and qatar airways and etihad the big middle east three airlines they're fantastic if you want to fly from europe to a long-haul destination like asia or australasia or even africa and they have some quite good deals on those routes but what if your destination is the middle east from europe and suddenly emirates and etihad their fares can be quite steep for what they are because you're just taking like a non-stop flight in that case airlines like amy hey you're fantastic because with this stop in beirut you can be anywhere in the middle east with like two or three hour flights either side of beirut and for that this a321 neo with these amazing business class seats and even a nice economy on the back um it's a no-brainer really i mean sure the airport in beirut is a bit of a bus station it's not the nicest airport to fly through but with a little bit of work there that could be absolutely fantastic and with the service that mea offer the quality of the food the quantity of the food and the customer service on board it's just absolutely phenomenal and that would make to me flying on mea in the future an absolute no-brainer when it comes to flying in this part of the world and with that we started our descent towards istanbul which treated us to some incredible views as we made our way down [Music] we flew right over the top of sabia gotcha airport home of course to pegasus [Music] and here of course is the old ataturk airport still used for cargo and more recently as a vaccination center [Music] i really enjoyed my flight with mea the crew were so lovely and the aircraft were really nice too the only thing that let them down a bit really was the airport in beirut but the cedar lounge did more than make up for it of course the likes of emirates and qatar airways will give you a much more polished experience but that does come at a price and for what you pay i wouldn't have any problems flying me8 again imagine your london flights must be difficult for a long day yeah five hours or so yeah yeah for one night for one night yeah we love primark yeah yeah everybody loves private thank you so much as always a massive thank you to my patrons for helping to make these videos possible you can join them at the link on the screen now for access to my whatsapp group live zoom calls with me and much much more and welcome to istanbul international airport the new airport here fantastic ride over with mea from dubai really enjoyed that fantastic service from the crew and everything lovely seats as well um on the a321 here give them a go if you need to go to that part of the world why wouldn't you try mea cheap comfortable nice service and fantastic food as well so um yeah thank you ma for a great flight and i'm off now to get my next one somewhere else exotic another country on this trip is just going on and on isn't it this keep bringing it new content every week you must love it um to keep coming back and watching it anyway but yeah hit that subscribe button so you don't miss the next one and in the meantime thank you so much for watching take care and i'll see you on the next one bye for now
2022-09-02 09:31
