Latest news with #EmmaWood
Daily Mail
2 days ago
- Daily Mail
I'm an Emirates cabin crew supervisor - here are my 10 essential tips to get the most out of flying business class
Flying business class is a luxury that takes the stress right out of travelling, but it obviously comes at a greater cost than economy. So, is it worth it? If you can afford to, then without a doubt, yes. It turns flying from simply a necessity to get from A to B into a pleasurable and very comfortable experience to look forward to and savour. If you are going to splurge, it makes sense to get your money's worth and enjoy all the amenities because, unlike many economy services, business provides much more than just the flight. Emirates airline offers one of the world's leading business class services. Here, cabin supervisor Emma Wood gives her top tips to make sure you experience all it has to offer: 1 - MAKE USE OF THE COMPLIMENTARY CHAUFFEUR SERVICE Enjoy seamless travel from your doorstep to the airport with Emirates' complimentary Chauffeur Drive Service, included in the ticket price in most countries for Business Class customers, including the UK and Dubai. This premium car service accommodates customers within 70 miles of the airport. Make sure you book it in advance to make the most of it. Any excess mileage will be subject to an extra charge. If you'd like to travel further, or to request an infant or child seat, it is best contact your local Emirates office at least 24 hours in advance. 2 - ARRIVE UP TO FOUR HOURS BEFORE YOUR FLIGHT TO ENJOY THE LOUNGE Make sure you give yourself enough time to indulge in one of Emirates Business Class Lounges before your flight - you can access the lounge up to four hours before scheduled departure time. They offer the ultimate way to start your journey with gourmet dining with locally sourced foods, alongside a premium beverage selection. The designated quiet zones and Business Centres feature complimentary Wi-Fi, making them ideal spaces for unwinding or catching up on work, while private showers and spa treatments ensure you can reset and feel refreshed before you board. Business Class travellers departing Dubai can also visit the exclusive Moët & Chandon Champagne Lounge. Here, four of the brand's most iconic champagnes are served alongside delicately crafted canapés by Michelin-starred chefs. The lounge's elegant design and tranquil setting provides a refined pre-flight moment. 3 - BROWSE THE MENU OPTIONS AND PRE-ORDER Emirates Business Class offers an elevated onboard dining experience, featuring a diverse selection of food and beverages from sweet and savoury snacks to gourmet meals and complimentary champagne. Enhance this inflight dining experience further by pre-ordering your main course as early as 14 days and up to 24 hours before you fly. It's a simple way to guarantee your top pick, and it helps streamline the dining experience once you're in the air. For those who prefer to decide closer to take off, the full food and beverage menu is available to browse via the Emirates app or website. Whether you're craving something familiar or curious to try a regionally inspired dish, your selections are just a few taps away. 4 - ENJOY THE AWARD-WINNING WINES AND CHAMPAGNE SERVED TO YOUR SEAT A wonderfully curated selection of white and red wine is available, alongside premium spirits and an array of other beverages. In Business and First Class, Emirates has tailored its wine selections into six regions: the UK and USA, Europe, Africa, Middle East, Australasia, and Asia. This approach allows the airline to offer wines closely aligned with the taste preferences of passengers from these regions. 5 - KEEP THE COMPLIMENTARY LOUNGEWEAR AND WASH KITS One of the newer touches on board is Emirates' thoughtfully-designed Business Class loungewear. On flights over nine hours, passengers receive a matching set of ultra-soft cowl-neck top and pants, made from breathable modal fabric in a soft blue tone. It's the kind of outfit you can easily fall asleep in. The kit includes matching slippers and an eye mask, all neatly packed in a drawstring pouch. On shorter flights, slippers and an eye mask are still provided to keep things relaxed. To complement this experience, signature Bulgari amenity kits are also offered on long haul flights, containing luxury skincare products and fragrances, alongside other comfort essentials for your personal and convenience care during the journey. Customers can make use of a dental kit, earplugs, a double mirror made from wheat straw material, deodorant, tissues, and a foldaway hairbrush with a new soft black elastic hair tie. On flights over nine hours, passengers receive a matching set of ultra-soft cowl-neck top and pants 6 - ENJOY WHAT REALLY SETS BUSINESS APART FROM ECONOMY - THE BED When you're ready to switch off, your seat seamlessly converts into a fully flat bed with a mattress topper, plush blanket, and pillow, designed for optimal rest during your flight. Adjustable lighting and seating controls allow you to create the perfect sleep environment. Should you need additional bedding or assistance, the crew will be happy to help. 7 - SIT AT A BAR TO CHAT WITH FELLOW PASSENGERS AND CABIN CREW Step away from your seat and stretch your legs in the iconic Emirates onboard lounge. With its comfortable leather seating and curated premium beverage selection, it offers a welcoming environment to enjoy a speciality cocktail, savour gourmet bites, and connect with fellow travellers at 40,000 feet. 8 - ENJOY LIVE SPORTS EVENTS AT 40,000 FEET For sports fans, the onboard lounge can also stream live TV, so you don't have to miss your favourite match while in the air – whether it's the Emirates FA Cup Final or Wimbledon. Ask cabin crew to change the channel on the large TV if there's something you want to switch to. 9 - GET A POLOROID MEMENTO Something our passengers love doing is getting a few nostalgic pictures of their experience in Business Class using our onboard Polaroid camera. Don't forget to ask cabin crew if you or your family want to get a nice picture keepsake of you posing in the onboard lounge to take home. 10 - EXPLORE ICE TO PLAN YOUR FLIGHT ENTERTAINMENT INCLUDING MUSIC, GAMES, FILMS, TV SHOWS AND PODCASTS With thousands of hours of entertainment and up to 6,500 channels to choose from, Emirates' award-winning ICE system is best enjoyed with a little planning. Browse the latest films and shows before boarding and create a watchlist so you can start enjoying as soon as you're seated. ICE now also includes curated Spotify playlists and top-charting podcasts, so there are plenty of options to keep you entertained.
NZ Herald
23-04-2025
- Entertainment
- NZ Herald
All Whites captain Chris Wood welcomes arrival of baby girl
All Whites captain Chris Wood and his wife Emma have announced the arrival of their first child. In a post to Instagram, Emma Wood announced that Camille Lily Wood was born via an emergency c-section at 8.08pm on April 14 in England. 'She is everything we dreamed of and a thousand times more,' read the caption. News of the pregnancy was first announced by Chris Wood after he scored the match winning goal for Nottingham Forest against Crystal Palace in a Premier League match on October 22. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Emma Wood (@emmaaaaawood)
Yahoo
28-01-2025
- General
- Yahoo
In 12 years, almost no takers for Marines' career intermission program
In 2013, the Marine Corps released an administrative message with an intriguing offer: Through a special pilot program, troops could hit pause on their active-duty career and transition to the Individual Ready Reserve for up to three years — giving them the chance to go to school, start a family or fulfill some other non-military pursuit. There were two catches: Marines had to commit to return to the service to serve double the amount of time they took off; and they had to apply for one of a limited number of spots — 20 per year for enlisted Marines and 20 for officers. A dozen years later, fewer than half of the spots from the first year alone have been claimed. According to Lt. Col. Emma Wood, a project manager with the Marine Corps' Strategic Talent Management Group, as of Nov. 24 of last year, only 16 Marines have taken advantage of the service's Career Intermission Program, or CIP, since it stood up as a pilot. And the individuals who have opted into the program don't fit a specific category. Seven of those Marines, she told the Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services in a December briefing, had fulfilled their post-intermission obligated service and remained on active duty; three had transferred to other services to pursue career paths the Marines don't offer, including military nurse and chaplain; two had taken advantage of Temporary Early Release Authority to depart after fulfilling their CIP obligation; three had gotten out after the end of their contract; and one was still paying off the post-intermission service. The Corps has a plan to stop Marines from leaving. Is it working? For the planners who envisioned CIP as a way to hang onto Marines who might otherwise be tempted to depart for other pursuits, the program would appear to be a swing and a miss. For the three Marines who had left service after completing a single post-intermission tour, Wood said she saw a potential missed opportunity to take a more conventional path. 'If I look at those three service members, I think, 'Oh, they would probably be better served to have done an [Active Duty Operational Support] period, maybe, and also maybe a drill during that time in CIP,' she said. 'That's one of the limitations of CIP, is that you, the service member, cannot drill during that time. So, if it's a three-year period, particularly, you're not maintaining readiness or affiliation with the Marine Corps.' Active Duty Operational Support, or ADOS, is a program that allows Reserve Marines to fill an active-duty role for a set time period. Part of the vanishingly low take rate on CIP may be due to the Marines' lack of targeted advertisement of the program, Wood suggested. But it may also be that the program's terms and limitations simply don't add up to a good deal for many Marines. She compared CIP to an '[active component]-minus' arrangement that took Marines out of the active community for a period of time. Another option that 'might offer more agency' for Marines, she said, is a '[reserve component]-plus' model in which Marines remain in the Reserve component, but participate in significant activation periods. 'It might be more appetizing,' Wood said. Wood added that the Marine Corps was developing a legislative proposal that would change the terms of CIP and send Marines from active duty into a Reserve drilling component rather than the non-drilling IRR, allowing troops to stay more ready and engaged with their service, and potentially do a better job of preserving interest in returning to service for a significant amount of time after their career pause concluded. 'I don't know if we see that as being very likely soon, but that's something that we're actively looking to pursue,' she said. All the military services, including the U.S. Space Force, now have their own version of CIP. And while not all have made their numbers public, the Marine Corps is not alone in its struggles. In a Navy presentation also delivered to DACOWITS, service officials cited a series of lessons learned about obstacles that kept sailors from participating in CIP. In addition to the Marine Corps' finding that a transition to the Selected Reserve would be more appealing than a sabbatical in the IRR, the process for transitioning in and out of CIP lacked clarity, said Rear Adm. Jennifer Couture, the service's director for Military Personnel Plans and Policy. And, she said, both service members and their dependents lose their benefits, including health care and base access, during their time out of uniform. Since 2009, according to the Navy, 190 women and 177 men have entered CIP. The Navy, Couture said, has changed to allow for applications on a rolling basis and is seeking to remove limits on when sailors can apply for CIP relative to their projected rotation date to further remove barriers. 'We're continuing to iterate on the feedback that we receive from our sailors about how to make these programs more meaningful,' Couture said. Katherine Kuzminski, the deputy director of Studies and program director of the Military, Veterans, and Society Program at Center for a New American Security, told Military Times that the career sabbatical programs, often promoted specifically as a way for women to step away from service to have children, also had cultural drawbacks that manifested 'behind closed doors.' Kuzminski, whose research has involved focus groups with service members who have participated in CIP or considered it, said a lack of familiarity with the program may end up affecting the career progression of participants. 'One of the biggest flags is, you never want your file to look different from anyone else's,' she said. 'And so, if you took the career intermission program and there's only 20 officers in an entire service who took it, the folks who are serving on the [promotion] board don't know what that is. So, it's not that they're punishing you for taking the career intermission program — [they just think], 'We're gonna select people whose career path we understand.'' For many pursuits that might require time away from active duty, like education, other existing military programs might be a better fit, Kuzminski said. But she maintained that the costs of keeping CIP as an option were probably low enough to keep it active. In total, the Marine Corps spent $175,638 on CIP for the program's first three years. In addition to the changes that Wood proposed, Kuzminski said she'd like to see prominent leaders promoting CIP success stories to show troops that career success with the program was possible. 'If the 75th Ranger Regiment commander … says, 'I took the career intermission program because we had a toddler and a newborn at home, and my wife's job mattered more than mine, and then it enabled me to stay such that I'm now in this leadership position,' that would sell it,' she said. 'But that person, that experience is never going to be selected for that position, I don't think.'
