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2015 RTW

Etihad EY18 A380 LHR-AUH First Class Review and Dubai Trip Report

Etihad EY18 A380 LHR-AUH First Class Review and Dubai Trip Report

Geez I don't even know where to start.

The Round-the-World Series

I guess to start it off, I was picked up from my hotel, the Intercontinental - London Park Lane by a driver from Etihad. At the time, Etihad provided black car pickup and dropoff on first class reward flights. As I understand it, that is now limited to Etihad Guest members with status, but it was a pretty crazy deal at the time.

After I was dropped off at LHR, I had some time to enjoy the lounge. I will say, the Etihad Lounge in LHR was just a'ight. The food was decent, but I felt obligated to eat as much as I possibly could because... free food.

Fairly quickly it was boarding time and boy oh boy I was absolutely flabbergasted. I'm sure at this point most know, but the Etihad A380 stood alone as having a single-aisle widebody layout in First Class (though Singapore also did this later).

The First Class cabin is set up in only 9 "Apartment" seats in the cabin, plus the "Residence", a three room private suite of sorts. My own seat was in 3A and it was a world of firsts for me.

First, geez this seat was big. Etihad not only has an extremely wide seat, but they also have a full on couch facing you. This later transforms into the bed, but is really handy for a footrest, a seating area for others, or just to enjoy the luxury of it.

Secondly, if you look at the seat map, you can see that the odd rows are actually reversed. I'd never flown sitting backwards before and was kind of excited to see how it felt. In flight, there really was no difference, but it was kind of fun to have the reverse of the normal feelings when taking/off landing.

It wasn't long after I settled in that they came around with menus and food orders. I will say that there was quite a bit of turbulence on this flight, so when you see a splashes here and there a) it was turbulent and b) I'm a mess.

I'm a Kansas boy through and through, so of course I had to order the steak. Sorry bout it.

Everything was dang good.

At this point, it was getting reasonably late and the flight crew asked if I was ready for turndown service. Which of course I was! At this point, it's probably prudent to note that I am 6'3" and I often have a hard time scrunching up even in first class seats.

No such problem for Etihad.

The way the cabin is set up, it was really handy to still have room to move around.

The one kind of wonky thing about it is because you're sitting perpendicular to the movement of the plane, I did get a bit of seasickness of sorts, but honestly I also had drank quite a bit of champagne at that point, so who knows. Again, the turbulence was pretty bad so it was a pretty rocky night's sleep, but even then it was quite an experience and I enjoyed it.

Sunrise was pretty spectacular.

As I woke up the next morning, I had one final surprise waiting for me that I regretfully couldn't photograph well.

Etihad is one of two airlines that offer on-board showers. Etihad's isn't quite as luxurious as Emirates, but it was still an experience that I don't know I can quite explain how ridiculous it is and also how fun it is. There is only five minutes of water, so it's not a long thing, but it was still crazy fun.

After I cleaned up and dressed, it wasn't long before I was landing in Abu Dhabi. This is where the last bonus from Etihad came into play. My next departing flight was on Singapore, but was actually leaving out of Dubai. I used the Etihad chauffeur to drive me all the way from AUH to my AirBNB in Dubai, which was about an hour and a half drive.

I don't plan to write a post on Dubai as I stayed at an unremarkable AirBNB and there wasn't too much to do there, but I would generally describe it as a dry version of Vegas.

Parting image:

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