KEY POINTS:
The crowd was two-deep at the bar just minutes after the fasten seat belt sign was off aboard Emirates super jumbo's first commercial flight.
The cocktail lounge comfortably holds around 25 premium class passengers at any one time and was the most popular spot on the plane throughout the flight from Dubai to New York.
And it fell to former Aucklander Troy Whittle to pour litres of Moet and juice to those who piled into the bar.
An Emirates cabin crew member for the past four years he had to be one of the busiest aboard for a few hours serving most among the 14 first class and 76 business class passengers heading to JFK airport.
"It's about being organised - you dig deep and cope," Mr Whittle said.
The lounge has a couple of sofas and a 42-inch television which the airline promotes as a return to the good old days of travel, less mass transit, more mix and mingle, upstairs at least.
The flight from Dubai to New York takes 13 hours and in spite of average delays of around 60-minutes for 65 per cent of the aircrafts landing last year at JFK, flight EK3801 arrived.
A big Airbus had made a test-flight from Germany to JFK in March to ensure a $210 million revamp to accommodate super jumbos worked.
The airline has itself a very smart new plane and travelling on the upper deck helps.
Downstairs in economy there are seats for 399 passengers and they hunkered down for the long haul in a series of four cabins which the airline says offer "more personal space."
Emirates will start flying the A380 across the Tasman out of Auckland from next February and while fares have not been finalised, there will not be a A380 premium.
The aircraft is almost as new to the crew of as it is to passengers and there's always going to be the odd glitch, temporarily misplaced pyjamas for first class passengers. Hardly catastrophic.
Keith Longstaff, divisional senior vice president of commercial operations, has seen a few inaugural services in 50 years in aviation with some going better than others.
Three hours out from New York he was confident enough to declare this one a success, with a few wrinkles to look at.
The much talked about showers were a hit among first class passengers who get between five and eight minutes each.
Dubai dentist Dr Gunter Neumann was the first to take the plunge, happily brandishing pictures he'd taken of himself (from the chest up) on his iphone as he moved towards the cocktail lounge. It was that kind of flight: "I wanted to be first", he said, adding that "the pressure was just fine".
Like dozens of others he pulled out all the stops to make it by ploughing his air miles for the leap to first class where list prices for the return trip are around $15,000 plus.
"I've been in Dubai for eight years this month and I wanted to celebrate," said the 36-year-old, originally from Germany.
He admitted to just a little guilt over the decadence.
Signs on the door warn of a maximum occupancy of two but this relates to oxygen supplies in the event of an emergency rather than an invitation to share a shower and the area is closely monitored by attendants.
While some wouldn't have missed the flight for the world for others it's a means of getting around, including an American woman at the departure gate who was mystified by the giveaway of model planes and a first flight certificate bearing the signature of airline chief executive, Sheik Ahmed Bin Saeed al-Maktoum.
"I just want to get home," she said.
* Grant Bradley travelled as a guest of Emirates.
