Frequent Miler's latest team challenge, Million Mile Madness, is almost done! The last two weeks Greg, Nick, and Stephen competed to earn 1 Million SAS miles by flying 15 airlines. But who completed the challenge with the most Speed, Affordability, and Style?
I first flew Etihad First Apartments in 2019 on an overnight flight from Abu Dhabi to London. I was blown away by that experience. Now, in November 2024, I had the great opportunity to fly Etihad First Apartments from Paris to Abu Dhabi. Thanks to this being a daytime flight, I loved it even more than before!
Etihad First Apartments is the name for Etihad’s first class suites on their Airbus A380 aircraft. Each suite is like a little room with a narrow hallway, a recliner chair, a bench that converts to a single bed, and a vanity station with a mirror and drawers (one of which contains a mini-bar full of drinks). There is also a bathroom with shower which is shared by first class passengers (you must book a shower time in advance, and while you can spend as much time in the bathroom as you want, you get a maximum of 5 minutes of water from the shower).
My flight experience
This was a daytime flight which meant that it offered a full menu whereas overnight flights have abbreviated menus. More importantly, it meant that I was able to be awake for most of the experience so that I could fully savor every moment of the flight!
Early in my flight to Paris, I asked for the bed to be made up. I hadn’t slept very long the night before and needed a nap. While the flight attendant made up my bed, I waited in the bar/lounge. This area is shared with business class passengers, but I was alone there at that time. In a few minutes, my bed was ready. I found the bed extremely comfortable and fell right to sleep!
After a delicious 45 minute nap, I got to work doing one of my favorite things: eating! I ordered the caviar plate, followed by the lobster tail appetizer, then the fillet main course, and finally the apple tarte dessert. All of the food was wonderful. I especially loved the caviar and lobster courses!
With the lobster course, I did a wine tasting of the 4 white wines they serve on board. With the fillet, I sampled all 4 of their red wines. After dessert I tried a whiskey: Royal Salute 2YO Blended. It was very good, but it was no Hibiki 17 (which our entire team got to enjoy on ANA first class, during the Party of 5 Challenge).
After eating, I showered. It was wonderfully refreshing!
Overall, the only negative about the flight was that some of the hardware needs attention. Various cabinets and drawers wouldn’t close properly without slamming them very hard and very loudly. The only other negative was that the flight wasn’t long enough. The flight was scheduled for 6 hours and 40 minutes. I would have happily enjoyed the flight for many additional hours if I could.
Another thing to note is that, unlike my previous experience with Etihad Apartments, I wasn’t introduced to the onboard chef. Since my food was delicious as-is, this didn’t bother me in the least. I thought it was worth mentioning here, though, because access to the chef was a fairly big part of the wow factor of my previous flight. During that flight, I didn’t like the breakfast I had ordered, and so the chef came to my suite to discuss options and then he returned with a wonderful custom breakfast.
Booking the flight
I found this award flight easily by simply searching AA.com for awards from Paris. The price was 62,500 AA miles plus $142.93 in fees. The award also included an onward business class flight from Abu Dhabi to Jeddah.
As things stand today, with most routes you can’t use AA miles to book Etihad first class more than 30 days in advance. With the route between Paris and Abu Dhabi, though, I do see some availability farther out, but there’s definitely a lot more availability close-in. For me, I booked about a week in advance, so it didn’t matter either way.
I hope you know that you are kind of living my dream life…
Didn’t know Greg could time travel too (those schedule open bookings must be getting to him)!
Whoops! OK I traveled back to 2024 and fixed the post
How much did you have to tip the FA who took the shower pic?