The Apartment

This experience is so far above and beyond any other experience you could have on a commercial flight that is almost defies belief. It actually approaches being on a high-end cruise. This is ultra luxury at its finest.

When you enter your Apartment it’s the spaciousness that you focus on initially. In each Apartment is a leather First Class chair along with a leather sofa that can be converted into a bed.

It’s difficult to wrap your head around the sheer size of the personal space. Its so large that you could easily seat six in an Apartment. Really not kidding. Each Apartment has three windows and a set of doors that closes it off from the aisle. I honestly never saw another whole person until we were exiting the aircraft and the cabin was booked full. You saw pieces of people when you got up to go to the enormous bathroom, like a foot or a hand, but never an entire person. And you certainly didn’t hear any noise.

And then you begin to focus on the design details. Like the hidden vanity with the empty amenity kit whose design celebrates local artisans from Abu Dhabi. The vanity itself holds all the amenity kit contents and you can just pick and choose what contents you’d like in your amenity kit.

Your personal chilled wet bar. Or the silver tray that the flight attendant uses to bring you a drink or cocktail or any sort.

The nice lamp that casts a warm light in the Apartment so that when you watch the 23″ LCD TV it feels like you’re at home in your own living room. Honest.

And the remote control that doubles as a telephone for seat-to-seat and seat-to-crew calling. We chatted on the phone a few times through the flight. It also controls everything inside The Apartment including the lighting.

The remote also controls “E-Box” which is the Etihad inflight entertainment system that has 750 hours of content loaded.

And then the service begins. See you in the next post for that but I’ll leave you with a pano of the whole Apartment as seen from your seat.