Wednesday 25 June 2014

Flying with Etihad- Review


Picking the airline
When we first decided to do this trip, knowing we were going to be on a plane for quite a while we wanted a little comfort. But comfort comes at a price! Prices started from £450 with china airlines up to the thousands. We started with the airlines we knew. Virgin AU was giving us £900 upwards and British airways £3000 for a one way ticket, that was out of the question. We knew we needed a cheap flight but didn't want to be miserable and uncomfortable for that long amount of time. I took to the Internet daily to check for the best prices, comparing all sites and reading many reviews. Personally I like reading reviews, it's a little insight into the things your going to spend money on.  

Finally after looking for a few weeks, Bobby had found a flight in our price range with Etihad. I had never heard of the airline, the only thing i knew at the time was that it was on a Man city's football shirt. 
One of my friends, who i use to work with is a air hostess for Etihad so i sent her an email and she said nothing but good words about it. For the price it was giving us and the comments from people we had asked we thought why not and booked it!


Heathrow to Abu Dhabi

Being eager beavers we decided to board the plane as soon as they opened the gate. As we are travellers the cheapest option was of course Coral economy but we booked 2 seats together at the back of the plane, that meant having to walk through premium economy.
Seeing people sip on champagne and stretching their legs out in their own pods was when i turned to Bobby and demanded that we at least experience it once in our life. Jealously had definitely set in. But saying that the seats we had chosen were actually quite nice. They were spacious and on them was a blanket and headphones. A mini TV and game console in front of you and the usual magazines. We had no annoying people around us so far so good.

Our flight was 6 hours and 55 minutes to Abu Dhabi, so we checked out the inflight movies and there was a good selection that we hadn't seen. To name a few: American hustle, Anchorman 1 & 2, The Hobbit, The Hunger games: Catching fire, Grudge match, Delivery man, 12 years a slave and Robo-cop. There were also a good selection of TV shows. I was hoping there was going to be the film Frozen but sadly i was disappointed but Bobby was happy for me not to be singing every 5 minutes! Little did he know i had the album on my phone!

About an hour into the flight we were handed menus. Peanuts and a drink was the first thing we received and not long after was lunch. As we were at the back of the plane we thought yes were going to get served food first... we were wrong. By the time they had got to us they had run out of chicken, so i had the pesto pasta and Bobby had fish. My eyes went straight to the lemon crumble dessert. It was nice, i do wish i had the chicken or the fish as bobby's did look good but i left half of it as i couldn't stop dribbling over the dessert. It was goooooooooood! Drinks were continuous which was lovely. About an hour after food we were given a hot wipe to wash our hands with, i had never been given this on a flight before so it was a nice touch. After a nap I was woken up by the smell of a chicken pizza, i have to admit i wasn't a fan of it and neither was bobby. 

I always think the air hostesses look immaculate, their make-up and uniform were pretty much perfect! They were all nice, polite and welcoming. Through out the whole flight we had one lady in particular that took care of us and her name was 'Jane' She had a chat with us and asked about our selves, how long we were going for and our plans. We was near the end of our flight and she came over to us and gave us some playing cards for our next flight and a card with her name on and a website where we can leave comments. She wished us all the best of luck in Australia and reassured us that even though its hard starting over, it will all be worth it. We have never had such good service on a flight before. It was a a nice end to a good flight!

We were only in Abu Dhabi airport a few hours, enough time to get a burger king and a £4 small bottle of water. Yes i said 4 pound for a bottle of water, such a rip off but you have to pay it because you need it! We had gone through security and sat in the gate departure area and was then told our flight was delayed for an hour. So for an hour we had to sit there staring at seats.


Abu Dhabi to Sydney

This paragraph will be small, as we slept for the majority of the 13 hour and a half flight. I popped on the eye masks and took a few travel pills to knock me out and i was out for the count. We only woke up few times during the flight for food and each time we had food it was chicken. Chicken and rice, chicken roll, chicken and mash. I'm glad i didn't have chicken on the first flight. We were quite lucky with our flights, as the Abu Dhabi flight was in the day and the Flight to Sydney was at night so we finally got to catch up on sleep. When we did wake up we only had 1 hour left. Time to brush our teeth and get ourselves all sorted for landing.

Overall 

Very good and better than what we thought our flight would be. We will probably fly home with Etihad (hopefully in premium economy)
I would recommend this airline to anyone flying, definitely on a long haul flight.

Danielle & Bobby xx

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