And we’re off: Etihad Business Class Review

Despite the fact that it was an ungodly hour of the morning (I’m sure there is only one 5 o’clock in a day) we were really excited as it is the day we are off to Thailand! We thought long and hard about how we were going to fly to Thailand and decided that we couldn’t cope with being in economy for that long so we decided to book Etihad Business Class. Etihad was our airline of choice based on their offering and the price.

As part of the business class fare we could book a chauffeur at both ends of the journey. When we booked it and registered the request for a chauffeur we just had “your chauffeur is booked” and that they would get back to us 24 hours prior to the flight. Being the pessimist that I am I wasn’t holding out much hope that they would contact us with the time. However, they sent us an email a couple of days before to call them and I booked the chauffeur. It arrived at 5:35am as promised and was a really comfortable BMW 730D (I had the car details sent to me by text about 5 minutes before he arrived) and we were whisked to Heathrow Terminal 4 to check in.

Check in was a breeze and we had fast-track security as part of the deal. Bearing in mind we arrived curbside at the airport at 7:00am, we were checked in and through security into the comfort of the Etihad lounge within 10 minutes.

On arrival at the lounge, nothing was too much trouble. We were shown to a table in the restaurant where we had breakfast. Chris had eggs benedict and I had a “full English”. I put this in quotation marks as, due to it being a Middle Eastern airline, the bacon was turkey rashers and the sausage was chicken. However, this was all washed down with a latte and a couple of glasses of champagne.

The flight was delayed by an hour but this wasn’t an issue as they softened the blow with another coupe glass of the fizzy stuff. Before we knew it we were invited to board and, as it was an A380, we had a door for the upper deck which only had business and first class passengers boarding through it. We boarded through the “lounge area” (more on that later) then settled in to our Business Studio. This comprised of a seat that went in to a fully flat bed, plenty of storage and a massive TV screen to watch movies and play games.

As soon as we were boarded, we were offered a cooling glass of champagne and our order for food was taken. You can eat any time during the flight in Etihad Business Class so they do ask you this at the time. We did find that the service was slightly disorganised for the first half hour but maybe that was because they were rushing to get the aircraft prepared due to the delay. We decided to eat about one and a half hours after take off as this was about lunch time. The food was fantastic as was the wine (a refreshing glass of Crozes-Hermitage) and the chocolate lava cake was to die for. After eating, we decided to take advantage of the Business lounge on board the A380. This is a circular lounge with seats surrounding a coffee table with live BBC news showing on the big screen. We were the only passengers in the lounge and it was a very relaxing place to have a postprandial drink of port.

After eating, I decided to watch Trolls. This is really funny and I recommend you watch it then I played a couple of games on the screen. Although some of the games are designed for touch screens which was a bit difficult when the screen is so far away from your seat.

Having been delayed for an hour we were concerned that we would miss our connection. We needn’t have worried as the cabin manager came over and said that someone would meet us at the aircraft door to escort us to our next flight and that we would make it. However, this didn’t happen and we had to make our way very quickly to the next flight which was very stressful and we didn’t have time for the lounge in Abu Dhabi. We needn’t have rushed as they were only starting to board when we got to the gate.

We boarded quickly and settled in to our next Etihad business class seat. Whilst not as modern as the A380, it still had everything you needed and was comfortable. After having a Philly cheese steak sandwich we decided to go to sleep.

We arrived in Bangkok early, our cases were off first and we were through immigration – it only took about 10 minutes in total. We found our way to the chauffeur and off we went in our Mercedes limo to Hua Hin.