LONDON, 28 March 2008 — Starting Oct. 1 if you are on an Emirates flight from Dubai to New York and want to take a hot shower, cough up $18,000 and you can boast to your friends that you took a shower at 37,000 ft.
The Times Online reported yesterday that the Dubai-based airline will become the first commercial airline to offer a mid-flight shower facility in its first-class cabins. The service will be introduced on the Dubai to New York route and eventually extended to all routes taken by its new fleet of Airbus A380s.
Why the high price? The aircraft will have to carry an extra ton of water for the service, a payload equivalent to 12 passengers. And in case you care about the environment, it will incur a carbon cost of nearly 49,000 lbs. for every trip.
The airline compares the experience to Dubai’s “seven-star” Burj Al-Arab hotel but environmentalists blasted it as a crazy idea.
“It’s symptomatic of who really benefits,” said Robbie Gillett of the environmental campaign group Plane Stupid.
“The richest 18% in this country take 54% of all flights. The government is telling us to take fewer flights, but the huge increase in air traffic is not due to ordinary people going on family holidays, but because of excessive flying by the moneyed classes. Is this the type of development the aviation industry really needs?”
Emirates has yet to reveal details of its A380 first-class cabin but it is expected to exceed even the extravagance of Singapore Airlines’s front-end suites, with private cabins, double beds and a finely crafted dining environment.
