I began this post last night while waiting for my Emirates flight to Dubai in the Pacific Club Lounge in Terminal 3 at Manila’s Ninoy Aquino International Airport. I am now in Dubai waiting for my onward connection to Birmingham.

Until last Friday, 15 August, when they transferred to Terminal 3, Emirates along with almost all other airlines serving Manila still operated from the rather run down Terminal 1. That terminal is at last undergoing a much needed refurbishment.

While looking bright and clean, Terminal 3 is rather stark. But the check-in, immigration and security is a big improvement over Terminal 1. Maybe because so few airlines are yet relocated here. KLM, Cathay, and Singapore Airlines are due to join Emirates soon.

I settled myself into the lounge then decided to take a few photos. The lounge is nothing to write home about, adequate being perhaps the kindest description, but far superior to the lounge that Emirates used to use in Terminal 1.

Leaving the lounge to take some shots of the concourses, I hesitated over the threshold of the lounge entrance, and then the double glass doors suddenly closed on me. Rather than retracting, they continued to close. And all of a  sudden there was a loud explosion as one of the glass doors disintegrated all around me, glass flying everywhere, and I was left standing in a pile of glass shards. No real damage to me, but the door was a mess. I have a small cut on my right leg, a nick really, now covered in a handsome gauze dressing. The lounge staff were most solicitous for my welfare. That first G&T on the flight to Dubai to recover from the ‘trauma’ hit the right spot.