So, what did we need to sacrifice for Etihad to post it’s first profit in years?
Hi there, my name is Kevin and I make honest, unsponsored and to the point
narrated trip reports about flights and hotels all over the world.
This is episode 117 and today we have the mild pleasure of flying on one of Etihads 787
Dreamliners from Jakarta to Abu Dhabi in Business Class. The full experience begins in 10 seconds.
Welcome to, traffic. Make sure you plan plenty of time to get to the airport when flying out
of Jakarta because their rush hours last 23 hours per day. For today’s flight, if you’d like to know
the exact fare I paid or want to see my next five videos in queue, check out the description below.
How did this route come to be? Well, I had a $550 ticket from Athens to Kuala Lumpur in Saudia
Business Class, so I needed to get to Europe somehow and today’s flights fit the bill nicely.
Like a 7th grader proud of their C+, since well, it’s not failing, Jakarta’s airport is also proud
of the progress they’ve made- now ranked as a 3-Star airport by SkyTrax. I wonder if they charge
per star or if it's just a set package. By the way,
if you enjoy or just appreciate honest and authentic travel content,
please make sure to give this video a thumbs up and subscribe with notifications on.
Plenty more ways to support the channel in the description below as well. Thanks in advance.
I had already checked in online and was only traveling with carry on bags,
but a visit to the counter was still necessary to check documents and get a boarding pass-
but it was done quickly and by a very friendly agent.
As we go for a stroll through terminal 3 which opened in 2016 and is admittedly a massive
improvement over the other terminals, let’s speak about Etihad finally getting back to financial
stability. For the first half of 2022, they’ve reported an operating profit of $296 million-
an all time record for the airline. For a bit of backstory, I’m just going to read what Ben
at One Mile at a Time had to say about it, because I couldn’t frame it better. “Etihad’s
transformation is working (but it’s boring) In the several years leading up to the pandemic, Etihad
Airways lost around $6 billion. The airline was essentially lighting money on fire, until a new
transformation plan was put into place. Prior to the pandemic, Etihad engaged in possibly the worst
airline investment strategy in history, in order to create the Etihad Airways Partners concept.
The Abu Dhabi-based airline invest in airlines like airberlin (which liquidated),
Alitalia (which was taken over by the Italian government), Jet Airways (which liquidated, but is
coming back without Etihad involved), Air Serbia (which Etihad sold most of its stake in), Virgin
Australia (which went through bankruptcy), and Air Seychelles (Etihad sold its 40% stake for $1).
Not only was there the Etihad Airways Partners strategy, but Etihad also
planned to compete head-on with Emirates and Qatar in terms of its route network and fleet,
and at one point Etihad had hundreds of planes on order. For a long time the government of Abu
Dhabi seemed to be onboard with this strategy… but then it wasn’t. The airline has since undergone a
major transformation, which has included scrapping the ridiculous Etihad Airways Partners concept,
canceling all kinds of aircraft orders, retiring A380s, and more.
By the way, this is my new favorite way to shoot an airplane, so you can expect to see it at
every single chance I get. It was also nice to see the aircraft here already well
before the flight and the gate all setup. First thought, it was time to goto the lounge.
I am generally a fan of Plaza Premium Lounges, but I do believe this one, as the kids would say,
is a hot mess. The food was minimal, lukewarm and unappealing. The space itself is way way too small
and even at around ¾ full it felt like you needed to climb over each other.
Even if you just wanted a soft drink you needed to wait at the bar- which looked like it suffered an
isolated earthquake- to get it. It just all around wasn’t great- oh and it was actually literally
hot. Luckily I found one of the few seats that had both apron views and was near a vent.
Time to head to the incredibly organized and orderly gate with
twice as many gate agents as there were boarding groups.
While we wait to step on, let’s take a look at today’s flight stats.
We would have an almost on time departure and head up to 38000 feet
for our seven hour flight to Abu Dhabi where we would land a half hour early.
Business class boarding was called and away we went.
I was cut in line by someone half my age and twice as important
and we went through a secondary security check on the jetbridge.
I stepped on our two class five year old 787-9,
was pleasantly surprised by how fresh the cabin felt and found my seat for today 10K.
Let’s check out the cabin details. These are a custom all aisle access seat Etihad has been
using since 2014, which alternate forward and rear facing seats, with a total of 28 seats in a single
cabin. Only seats you’ll want to avoid are row nine window seats since there’s not window there.
Overall, the seats are decent but are lacking in two or three areas. First, it’s very easy
to catch glances with your neighbor across the aisle who will be sat in the opposite direction,
though there are small privacy shields. Secondly, the seat itself is lacking a lot
of depth at only 15.5 inches deep on one side, curving to a paltry 13 inches on the other.
Not great for long flights. Lastly, on the 787s specifically the seat frame is narrower
than space available and so the width around your knees is fairly narrow at just 20 inches across.
I have always been a fan of Etihad’s color palate though- well at least since the A380s rolled out.
Before Qatar’s Qsuites rolled out, I think this was possibly one of the classiest
and refined business class interiors out there.
At each seat upon boarding was a pillow, blanket, menucard, amenity kit,
headphones and bottle of water. The latter two in the convenience armrest storage area.
100% Qsuites are better than Etihad business class. Buuuut, I think we can all agree
that Qatar may have gotten just a bit of inspiration from these seats. Feel free to
tell me why I’m wrong in the comments. There’s a decent amount of space under
the foot rest for my smallish backpack and a newer generation IFE remote above the table.
Just next to that is an LED pad that allows you to control the seating,
lighting and windows but is completely redundant as you can do all of those functions
with physical buttons as well- except maybe the do not disturb.
The tray table, as far as I know very unique to Etihad launches out from the module in front of
you and then folds down for a very sturdy and thick table which can move closer and
further from you. Only downside of these tables are that you’ve got to push quite
firmly to put them away and some passengers prefer to just slam the hell out of them.
The headphones were fine, but I’d surely still use my own.
The covid kit- I don’t know are we still calling them Covid kits?
Clean kits? Anyway, was unique in that it came with a buff which claimed to be a microbarrier,
whatever that means. It was soft, but I can’t imagine it would do much of anything.
The pillow was nice quality and felt clean.
And the blanket I will maintain until proven wrong is the softest and most
comfortable blanket anywhere in the air. The amenity kits were, funny. Acqua di Parma
is a very stylish and expensive brand. And both kits look really good. But this one in particular
is borderline useless. Inside you’ll find a single lotion, mini perfume and toothbrush. The pouch
itself is… a receipt wallet? A place to store all of your obsolete airline membership cards?
Alright, this is just to show you, the size of the pillow, it’s bigger than the IFE screen,
it’s a decent size and it gets lost in this cavernous foot cubby which is one of the deepest
ones I’ve seen on any airline, but of course when your seat cushion is only 13 inches deep, you’re
going to have to make up for that somewhere. And here we have that frame that I talked
about which robs you of a good five inches of knee width room. At least
it’s a convenient place to store some things in flight.
The very stylish menu, we will take a look at in a bit. Unfortunately Etihad
cheaped out- as you’d expect- and didn’t install individual air vents, but I always come prepared.
Here are those physical buttons located just on the edge of the table across from you.
This is probably the only spot in my surroundings that showed any bit of ware and tare.
Turkish pulled in, much happier in this plane,
thanks. And we pushed back as some pretty insane storm clouds rolled in.
These are the clouds I was speaking about, this is just a few minutes later.
We’d be taking off to the west southwest
and then turning northward. The spoolup and take off is up next.
We would follow the Great Circle route pretty closely today taking us across southern India.
By the way, if you didn’t see my community post a few days ago,
I am currently planning two trips to India and am all ears for hotel and resort suggestions.
Check out my community posts for more info. And with that, dinner service began very quickly,
getting my fair share of my $10 bottle of Merlot, which was served with warm mixed nuts.
Here’s the menu- I’ve zoomed in a bit on the important food bits as well as the wines and have
put the US retail price of the wines on there in red. Overall I like Etihad's food generally. It’s
all dine on demand and they have a good variety. Same can’t be said about the wines though.
I’m no wine expert, but the wine selection just felt very one note to me, nothing bright or light.
I started with the crowd pleasing Arabic Mezze which was comprehensive
my only quib would be about that super duper pale olive oil.
Next up was a shrimp biryani which was utterly disappointing. When I first got it,
my first thought was “well I’m sure it’ll taste good…” Nah, it was bland city.
Fruit and cheese up next with a glass of port. It was good,
but you can’t tell me that jam looks appetizing.
Last up, a Jackfruit pudding which I ordered only because Jackfruit is my 2nd favorite fruit,
after pomelo in case you were wondering… It was a nice dessert,
but I would have never been able to identify jackfruit in there.
The bathrooms are cleverly all black which does make them seem cleaner throughout
the flight I think- and I do love love love the foot pedal operated trash bin.
Explored the IFE next. The selection isn’t half bad with the movie selections that you can see
on the screen now. There was certainly something for everyone as well as multiple live channels.
After that, I stared out the window for a bit and took a nap.
With a five hour transit ahead of me, I needed to wake up, so I started the first of four rounds of
iced americanos. I had my second one with the chicken and roasted vegetable sandwich
which may very well have been the best thing I ate on the flight. It was really good.
We made our way over Oman as the cabin was organized for landing and then just
cruised over a bunch of nothingness, followed by a few suburbs. If you’ve seen many of my videos,
you know I’ll generally say any takeoff or landing footage is worth a watch- not tonight.
After landing we made our way towards the terminal,
passing the beautiful looking new terminal which will probably never open
and then had to sit on the apron for a while, we were too early for our gate.
Finally got a gate and that is that. As we head into the Flip Flop Score, what are we thinking?
I’ve always been a fan of Etihad and had used them many times in the past when they
still flew directly into Saigon. I’d say the cuts they’ve made have overall been tolerable
and the experience really wasn’t all that different from what I had last time I flew
them some five years ago. Give me a seat cover and a tastier main dish at dinner
and this would have been a really decent flight. I hope you enjoyed
the video and will support it by giving a big thumbs up and subscribing for two
new videos every week. I’ll see you next time as we continue the journey to Milan.