Love Or Hate Before Even Visiting

Today we’re in Dubai, a futuristic city that many people either love or hate before they’ve even visited. Dubai gets this reaction from people. If you say Dubai, people have an image in their head and they either love it, or they hate it.

And then when you go to Dubai, you realize it’s just brilliant, whatever you thought of it before. It is incredibly liberal, incredibly open. The weather’s wonderful. It’s just incredible to see what they have done in the desert. And today I want to take you on a journey around Dubai, in a seaplane.

From a seaplane, you set off from Dubai Creek. You soar alongside the Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world. You don’t soar above it. You soar alongside it. You fly and float above this city that has grown shimmering, shining, out of the desert.

Extravagant Engineering Masterpieces

In a seaplane you fly low, you get this view of what has been created. These extravagant, excessive, engineering masterpieces. You go over — well, not quite over the Palm because there’s a no-fly zone directly above the Palm — but you go around the Palm in a way that is so baffling to the eye to see that they created something on such a scale, a completely artificial sand world.

And after going around, you do a loop, so people who were sat on the other side of the plane also get that perfect view. And that’s something that’s really good about the seaplane flights, the pilots are so relaxed. They’re not keeping you to a very exact schedule. They’ll make sure that everybody gets the same opportunity to get the same views. So if something is only on the left-hand side, the plane is going to turn. So it’s also going to be on your side.

After going around the Palm, you go over the World Islands. Now the World Islands weren’t as successful as the Palm, still only three of them are actually inhabited. But from above, they start to make sense. You can see what they’ve tried to do in creating this world map. And you can only see and understand it from the air, from a seaplane.

A Connection With Dubai’s History

And what I found really great about the seaplane is this connection to Dubai’s history. I didn’t know this when I went there, but the people of Dubai were actually quite used to seaplanes. Back in the 1930s, seaplanes would touch down on Dubai Creek.

Now, these seaplanes were part of the Imperial Airways connection or Imperial Airways routes, connecting Britain to its empire. So the places, Australia, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, India — and it was known as a flying boat service. So across about 10 days, you went from Southampton to Karachi in Pakistan via Marseilles, Rome, Brindisi, Athens, Alexandria, Basra, Bahrain, Dubai. And then you might go further. You might go further even to Asia, even all the way to Australia.

And these seaplanes would come down, London-Dubai Creek at a time when there was nothing, there was nothing there, but the sharks. There was no electricity. There was no concrete building. There was no paved road. There was definitely no runway. The seaplane landed on the Creek.

By 1938, Dubai was integral to the old British Empire’s aerial network. There was an air mail service. There was a connection to all the sides of the chain. And if you wanted to, you could fly from England to Australia via 31 different refueling stops, with Dubai Creek being one of them.

Now, that changed — the war came in the forties, seaplanes didn’t come back to the UAE. And since, in the last 20 years, Dubai has gone on to create the world’s largest airports. And for me, the world’s best airline.

But I really love that you can still do a seaplane journey. You can still have this connection with history and still take off and touch down on Dubai Creek today, even though the city is just transformed beyond recognition to what it was before.

Different Seaplane Options

So before it was a desert, and now it’s this incredibly complex, high, shimmering city that you can witness from above on a seaplane flight. There’s a 25-minute flight. There’s also a 40-minute flight, and there’s also a longer flight that connects Dubai with Abu Dhabi. So you get the Dubai scenic part, then you fly across to Abu Dhabi. You get the Abu Dhabi scenic flight, and then you touch down.

There’s also seaplanes out to the other islands. There’s a lot of different options, but if you’re in Dubai for one day and you want to make sense of this incredible cityscape, go on the seaplane, 40 minutes, fly, pass over the World Islands around the Palm, connect with its history. And soak up what Dubai was, and what it has become.