And yet this is just the beginning. A few miles across the tiny emirate another enormous, five-runway airport is under construction. For now, Dubai World Central serves partly as a cargo airport. But late in the next decade Emirates airline plans to transfer its operations there. The result: by 2025 more than 220 million travelers will be passing through the city’s airports annually. For Dubai, world domination is literally on the horizon.

On the Wing

Now follow these passengers onto one of the Emirates Airbus A380s. Emirates, owned by the government of Dubai, is one of the world’s fastest-growing international airlines and is a game changer in global travel. Together with the two other nouveau Gulf carriers, Qatar Airways and Abu Dhabi’s Etihad, the national airline of the United Arab Emirates, it has already made the European and North American warhorses of aviation seem down-at-heel and out of date. There are many reasons for their unlikely emergence out of these arid desert communities—oil first and foremost. But beyond this, there is the allure of the voyage. A passenger’s trip through the airport inspires a measure of wonder. And the magic-carpet experience on one of these aircraft is rather like checking into a small luxury hotel on the wing.

I join the stream of travelers transferring from the concourse to a shining new aircraft, around 400 boarding on the lower level into economy class and some 90 on the upper floor to business and first. On both tiers the passengers are greeted by a phalanx of attractive young air hostesses recruited from all over the world. (Though Emirates employs male stewards, none is in evidence today.) The cabin announcements reveal that the crew on this flight can speak English, French, German, Arabic, Spanish, Swahili, Mandarin, Italian, and Xhosa.

Although this is not my first A380 flight, I am still somewhat awestruck at how this 550-ton aircraft, after an almost silent and apparently effortless surge of its four Engine Alliance GP7200 engines, seems to float into the air after what appears to be a rather sedate rumble down the runway. Previously, my most vivid aviation experience had been on the Concorde, which, by dramatic contrast, rocketed across the tarmac at breathtaking speed and tinnitus-inducing decibels and scythed its way into inner space with all the romantic, devil-may-care optimism that defined life in the booming late-20th century. But this is commercial air travel in the credit-crunch 21st, and the A380 is a high-tech piece of aerospace pragmatism. Carrying 525 passengers up to 8,500 nautical miles nonstop (the Dubai-New York leg takes about 13 1/2 hours), the plane hums along in relative quiet—with astounding eco-correctness. Airbus claims that the A380 uses 20 percent less fuel than the Boeing 747, and that when fully laden and flying long-haul it is more fuel-efficient per passenger than a Toyota Prius.

The A380 is not a particularly pretty aircraft by the Concorde’s aesthetically pleasing standards; some airline buffs say it looks as if one bus has been squashed on top of another. But the space inside—the interior volume—is very impressive. The first-class cabin comprises 14 suites that are equipped with sliding doors for complete privacy as well as a vanity table, personal mini-bar, wardrobe, desk, 23-inch television screen, and what is effectively an armchair that converts into a bed. And if you want to take a shower at 40,000 feet, there are two of those on board. The food-and-wine menu is also appropriately lavish, with caviar, Dom Pérignon, Cakebread chardonnay, and 1989 Gruaud-Larose all standard fare.

At the back of the upper-deck cabin, directly behind business class, is the pièce de résistance: a fully operative stand-up bar that has been the social hub on every Emirates A380 flight I have taken. To make space for this in-flight lounge, Emirates president Tim Clark says, he has had to sacrifice six premium seats, but declares, “It’s the most popular thing we’ve ever done. They have a real party down there.” On this flight a group of Italian contractors join two British couples around the bar soon after takeoff. And they’re all still there six hours later as the plane starts its descent. It is, indeed, some party.