r/AircraftInteriors

Recently had the chance to fly Etihad’s A380 First Class Apartment from Abu Dhabi to Toronto. Even at over 14 hours, the flight went by in the blink of an eye.

Found this award in First Class all the way from Nairobi to Toronto via Abu Dhabi for just 120k AAdvantage miles + ~$70 in taxes. Etihad has been releasing first class awards with decent consistency within 5-10 days of departure, provided that there are at least ~5 seats available for sale.

I first flew this product over a decade ago when it first launched, and I’m happy to report that it’s still just about as good as I it was! The single aisle layout on an A380 is iconic, with the amount of real estate only rivaled by Singapore’s new first class. The separate bed vs. lounge vs. vanity areas really made it easy to rest and stretch in any way I want. With that said, I do wish that they used thicker and more plush bedding, as the sleeping surface felt rather hard.

In terms of F&B, it’s definitely been scaled back a bit since a decade ago - gone are the inflight chefs or highly customizable dishes with a dozen different ingredients to mix and match with. However, the quality is still pretty top notch. The recent addition of caviar is a nice touch, I thoroughly enjoyed the cod as my entree so much so I decided to order it again for breakfast. The wine list was good but nothing spectacular, with the champagne being Veuve La Grande Dame.

Service was fine, but didn’t have a ton of warmth or personalization. There were several major misses: 1) the iconic inflight shower was out of service as the handle apparently fell off and prevented the door from locking (water can’t be activated without it); 2) half of my seat controllers weren’t working, which prevented the bench from reclining to convert into a bed, thankfully the flight was less than half full and the crew was able to set up my bed in the adjacent suite; 3) towards the end of the flight, the entire upper deck, including all of business class, ran out of ice…so no iced coffee, juices were served warm, no cold drinks at all. Seems like a very easily avoidable issue that should’ve never happened.

Still, very happy to have got to fly on this iconic product again. Would highly recommend it to anyone!

I sketched out what I believe is possible for an E195-E2 aircraft. Having two cabins at either end of the aisle wouldn't be feasible, so I added business-class seats to occupy the window-side space. I think that, depending on the market, there could be interest in 3- or even 4-class cabin configurations. Adopting first-class seats would make the aircraft lighter, potentially maximizing its range and possibly enabling 7-hour flights.

I think the A220-300 is a good-sized aircraft. It’s a shame no Airline offer a true First Class cabin (as far as I know). The 2+3 seating configuration would allow for a First Class cabin on either side of the aisle, with plenty of space for the corridor. I looked up the dimensions of the First Class cabins on the American Airlines Airbus A321 and the British Airways Boeing 787-9. I sketched out roughly how the seating arrangement would look. I believe a premium market like New York could have sufficient demand to offer exclusive first-class flights to Europe, for example.