Halo Effect

Some new aircraft. New uniforms.

New onboard service. New destinations. New airline alliance.

A new airport terminal.

Etihad, the national airline of Abu Dhabi, is doing all of that as it rides high on a 23 per cent year-on-year increase in passenger numbers for 2014.

The airline achieved this remarkable growth by adding services to Perth, Dallas-Fort Worth, Jaipur, Los Angeles, Medina, Phuket, San Francisco,Yerevan and Zurich. Twentythree routes also saw additional frequencies. Etihad received delivery of 15 airliners from Airbus and Boeing, and additional aircraft added to its fleet through lease and equity arrangements.

All that set the scene for a glitzy spectacle centred around the arrival of its first Airbus A380, as well as the Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner, one of the less-heralded mainstays of Etihad’s future fleet.

The Airbus A380 is very much a flagship for Etihad

Etihad seems clear that its A380 is intended to be a niche product. With just ten superjumbos on order, plus five options, the 498-seater aircraft are set to be deployed on London, Sydney and New York JFK routes from Abu Dhabi. It’s a far cry from Emirates’ 140-strong superjumbo fleet, and it’s hard to see how Etihad will be able to resist adding extra A380s in time, particularly with the slot constraints at major airports and the gulf carrier flight restrictions for which many western airlines are lobbying their governments. The 41 787-9s, meanwhile, are expected to be a key part of opening up new long-haul routes for Etihad, which has faced a gap in its range and product offerings between the A330‑200, small A340-500 and -600 fleets, and the 777‑300ER backbone of its current network.

With money to spend, an industry – and passengers – to impress, and a corporate rebrand well under way, both the A380 and the 787 are

As a halo effect product that can only be flown by the 0. 2 per cent, it’s impressive.

key parts of the next generation of Etihad’s operations.

Don’t underestimate the halo effect of The Residence

At the top of the new Etihad product list is The Residence, a threeroom super-suite. The Residence’s unique selling point is a double bed and ensuite shower room and lavatory in the port ‘forehead’ area of the A380, which airlines have long struggled to fill. Qantas sets a galley and a little-used business class lounge in these spaces, as do other carriers like Thai Airways, Korean Air and Malaysia Airlines. Emirates has first class shower rooms. Other airlines offer just slightly larger lavatories to whichever cabin they situate at the front of the upper deck. Expect Etihad’s innovation to spark ideas among its competitors.

Despite Etihad’s aim of replacing sumptuous private jet accommodations for the ultraprivileged few, the bed feels a little small for two. Laid out facing towards the tail along the outside cabin sidewall, it’s perhaps slightly larger than a king single and tapers to fit the curve of the fuselage. It also ends abruptly at the wall of the lavatory, and if that sounds a little bunklike then it is. The space is, however, entirely enclosed and as private as you can get on an aircraft.

The living room area consists of a large, articulated leather twinseater upholstered with Poltrona Frau leather, together with a long banquette sofa that functions as a partner seat for dining à deux.

It also converts to a separate bed, presumably in case you are travelling with staff rather than a spouse.

You don’t need to travel with staff, of course: Etihad’s trend of offering functionally-branded cabin crew is continued with their Savoy-trained butlers, specifically designated for The Residence passengers and theonly members of the crew you’re likely to deal with on your flight.

The overall effect of The Residence is remarkably calm, elegant and understated, even with the rather extravagant carpet in the living area. No faux-walnut effect, I’m-A-Celebrity mirror lights or fake brass here. As a halo effect product that (for a solo traveller on this nearly 500-seater aircraft) can only be flown by the 0. 2 per cent, and won’t be installed beyond Etihad’s 10 ordered A380s, it’s impressive.

The buzz generated online – from the miles-and-points blogger who ran a Kickstarter project for a ticket, to the thousands of column inches devoted to it (not least in magazines such as Australian Aviation) might even have been worth the cost of designing and installing the product without selling a single seat.

The A380 first class Apartments are a quiet revolution

Yet perhaps more innovative than The Residence, and certainly an order of magnitude more likely to be flown, is the world’s first single-aisle widebody cabin containing Etihad’sfirst class Apartments at the front of the A380’s upper deck.

Each Apartment is a B/E Aerospace seat-bed combination in an L-shape, with a sofabed perpendicular to the aisle and the seats opposite the sofabed taking up half the length of the Apartment, alternating in a forwards-backwards arrangement. Altogether the seat-sofabed combination will seat three in flight, though only one during takeoff and landing.

It means that six of the nine Apartment beds are adjoining, allowing – at head level anyway – a double bed arrangement. Part of the Apartment wall between the beds retracts, so passengers travelling with a partner can hold hands when falling asleep, though they’re separated by a wall below the waist. When in bed mode, air cushions inflate the mattress to provide a more luxurious sleeping surface.

It’s this cabin, with its seat & sofabed combination, that is most revolutionary – and most likely to be replicated elsewhere. Only the limited number of airlines withan upstairs first class cabin on the A380 can offer a product like The Residence. Any airline with a widebody can offer a product like the Apartment.

The new top-to-tail Business Studio seats are a mixed bag

Etihad’s newest business class seats on the A380 are designed by Airbus subsidiary Sogerma and implemented in a higher density than the existing staggered Solstys seats on the rest of its widebody fleet. Etihad calls it the Business Studio, as distinct from the rebranded Business Flatbed that is the current product. Reclining to a fully flat bed with direct aisle access, the seats are arranged in a top-to-tail configuration, where the feet of one passenger extend into a covered footwell that extends as far as the shoulders of their opposite number.

If that sounds remarkably like an evolution of British Airways’ Club World seating from 2000, updated in 2006, that’s because both seats take advantage of the fact that human beings are narrower at the feet than they are at the shoulders. The amount of cabin footprint lost inthe ‘stagger’ of Solstys and similar products like the B/E Aerospace Apex seat can be reduced.

There are drawbacks however, particularly for tall passengers who no longer have the option of selecting aisle or window seats, where the Solstys seat had a cutaway that allowed them to poke their feet out of the confines of the footwell. And despite the advertised length of “up to 80. 5in”, which converts to 204cm, the tapered shape of the seat makes it feel less spacious than the current product. That’s especially true in aisle seats, since the space for window and centre passengers to slip through to their seats cuts down on bed length by around 15-20cm.

Pleasingly, the business class section, situated in the rear of the upper deck, is broken up by cabin monuments so that it feels a littleless like an enormous dormitory than many A380 cabins.

Etihad raises the bar for inflight lounge fittings

Between business and first class upstairs sits a combined lounge, bar and galley that Etihad calls the Lobby, with seating for 5-6 people around a small circular table on the starboard side of the aircraft and a standup area in the port aisle.

Inflight bars might be de rigeur for upmarket carriers these days, but Etihad’s decision to install premium galley fittings and firmly on-brand lighting fixtures makes the Lobby a classy and elegant place to stretch your legs and meet fellow passengers – or, if you prefer, plug in to the AC power point, USB socket, inflight audio hookup or ethernet ports that are tucked away behind the armrests.

Economy: it’s mostly about bread, circuses and unconsciousness

Over the last half decade Etihad’s has been taking decisions that place its economy class squarely in the lower-middle end of the passenger experience pack. The airline converted its Boeing 777 fleet to a 10-abreast economy class pitched at 31 inches, compared with the ten-abreast 32 inches of Emirates and the nine-abreast, 33 inch pitch of Qatar Airways.

The A380 continues in this vein: a 31 inch pitch, though mercifully 10-abreast, filling the entirety of the main deck. No outing yet for the much-rumoured 3-5-3 layout on the Airbus superjumbo, which the planemaker has been mooting in a remarkably on-again, off-again way.

Interestingly, the seat structure isn’t one of the bleeding-edge options, being based on a tried-and-tested Weber 5751 design first launched in 2011, before Weber was taken over by Zodiac. But within the constraints of hard-nosed airline seat footprint economics, Etihad has built on the basics and put some thought into the passenger experience in what it calls its “economy Smart Seat”.

The most obvious innovation is the padded camel leather fixed wing headrest, one per seat, which projects 10cm or so forwards from the seatback. It gives some much-needed privacy between passengers and is a “why didn’t

It is a “why didn’t anybody else think of that?” solution. First Class on the 787. john walton

It is a “why didn’t anybody else think of that?” solution. anybody else think of that?” solution to sleeping in economy without ending up on the shoulder of a seatmate.

Etihad’s second economy bedtime innovation is changing the design of the traditional aircraft pillow to make a convertible U-shaped neck pillow. The thin fabric pillowcase initially joins the two arms of the U, but it’s perforated for easy separation.

2015 will see the renovation of the airline’s existing fleet with the new Smart Seat product – a definite win for passengers.

Panasonic is keeping passengers entertained — and connected — on the A380 and 787

Throughout both aircraft Etihad selected Panasonic’s latestgeneration eX3 audio-video on demand entertainment system, based on an Android touchscreen user interface and a significant improvement on previous generations of IFE. Etihad is a launch customer for eX3, and the system feels natural to use in the age of iPads.

There’s additional content on board, larger screens, and Phitek magnetic headphone connectors to replace the traditional series of one or more headphone pins for audio (and, in premium cabins, power to the noise cancelling headsets).

Spruiked at trade shows like the Aircraft Interiors and the Airline Passenger Experience expos for some time now, the Phitek system is most akin to Apple’s MagSafe laptop connector. The benefit? Audio and power pins, which are 3. 5mm or narrower in standard connectors, don’t snap off inside the audio jack, which is a remarkably frequent occurrence that can render a seat’s IFE system inoperable and require maintenance.

On the A380, The Residence sees a 32in screen in the living area, with a 27in version in the bedroom. Each first class A380 Apartment or 787 Suite has a 24in screen facing the seat, and the screen swings out from the dividing wall for easy viewing.

Business class passengers on both aircraft have an 18in monitor, while economy has an 11. 1in screen.

Panasonic Avionics also provides Ku-band satellite inflight connectivity on both aircraft, the fastest option currently available globally. Australian Aviation tested the Panasonic system on board Etihad’s Boeing 777-300ER on return Sydney-Abu Dhabi flights and both performance and usability worked well, with downloads hovering between 2. 5-3 Mbps and uploads around 0. 1 Mbps. As expected, the usual skew angle issues did mean some cuts and slowdowns to the system for an hour or two near the equator, but overall the system is robust and usable. Qantas’s much-derided L-band trials this is not.

Etihad’s 787 is a slightly glammed up long-haul workhorse

In contrast to the revolutionary first class on board the A380, Etihad’s new 787-9 Dreamliner fleet will make headlines not for its onboard product but for the network effect that the stretched ultra long-haul aircraft will have.

As Etihad has sought to grow in the 11 years since its founding, it has struggled to find the aircraft to match its ambition. The airline still operates a small fleet of four A340- 500 and seven A340-600 aircraft – jets which most other airlines can’t get rid of quickly enough – and part of the reason for their retention is the longer, relatively thinner routes that the 787 was designed to serve.

In advance of its unveiling, the Dreamliner’s first class suites were the biggest talking point, since no other airline has selected a suite product for its 787s. Etihad’s suites are arranged in an unusual forwardsbackwards configuration, with thetwo sets of window suites facing each other and the two centre pairs facing away.

A curving aisle, convex to the centre of the cabin, allows Etihad to maximise width in seat mode or at shoulder level when sleeping, with a taper on the ottoman or the lower half of the bed – important on the comparatively narrow Dreamliner. Despite the taper, the curved suite walls and the lack of overhead bins in the cabin, another first for the Dreamliner, create a trompe-l’oeil effect that makes the suite seem square.

The business Studios on board are very similar to the Sogerma-produced A380 version, although the 787’s seating is produced by Zodiac, using materials and design language that clearly tie both products together.

In economy, narrower versions of the Weber 5751 seat are arranged in a high-density 3-3-3 configuration that is as unpopular with passengers as it is popular with airlines. On the positive side, they do come with the same Smart Seat inflight entertainment, headrest and pillow as the A380.

The new A380 and 787 are a key part of the new Etihad brand

With its new Facets of Abu Dhabi brand unveiled debuting on both the A380 and 787-9, it’s clear that Etihad sees its new aircraft as integral to the next stage in its growth.

The branding is blazoned across these aircraft, inside and out, from the eye-catching livery to the fixtures and fittings. There’s a faceted wall sconce by every seat in business class. Diamond-shaped patterns as accent lighting in The Residence bedroom and set into the doors of The Residence, Apartments and Suites alike. And a series of projected LED shapes – triangles,of course – illuminating wall and ceiling surfaces in the common areas of both aircraft, something Airbus has been spruiking for some time now.

Soft product, too, is tied in, and much of it has already been rolled out to the rest of the fleet. Sumptuous soft furnishings include a two-sided plush/cotton blanket in business, eyecatching accent pillows in premium classes, and galley areas are hidden away behind geometrically-patterened fabric or wood effect screens.

Also fleetwide is the new statement place setting in business class, with a firmly Facets-branded three-piece polished metal bread plate and basket set and flatware that reflect the lights of the cabin. In terms of that elusive premium sensibility, the weighty cutlery and unusual mise-en-place scores highly.

New mattresses failed to impress on Australian Aviation’s flights, however: they’re more fitted sheet than a thin mattress, and don’t provide much additional padding at all. When airlines like Air New Zealand are offering centimetres-thick memory foam mattresses, Etihad’s offering falls down.

New uniforms look the part

The final part of the transformation of Etihad comes in its new Italian-designed uniforms, a complete break with either its unmemorable grey previous outfits or anything else in the region.

A rich chocolate brown is the base colour for the new uniforms, with flashes of purple in the skirt, at the cuffs and with a scarf for women, and in ties for men. Ground crew and special services staff see the purple replaced with a burnt orange.

Regular women crew wear a jaunty retro brown hat, while senior crew’s hats are in the same bright purple.

Inflight nannies have a special orange tunic, the food & beverage managers wear the brown trousers with a cream jacket, inflight chefs wear a wraparound white smock with brown accents, and The Residence’s butler uniform – the only one to come with trousers for women cabin crew – is a chocolate brown morning coat and tie over cream trousers.

A new home at Abu Dhabi will house the new Etihad

Etihad’s existing home in Abu Dhabi’s terminals 1 and 3 already comes in for well-deserved criticism at peak times: even across both terminals, there just isn’t enough room for such a fast-growing airline – or the members of its Etihad Airways Partners alliance or partner Virgin Australia.

Come 2017, that will all change: Etihad will relocate to the new Midfield Terminal Building currently under construction to the west side of the airport complex, on the other side of the facility from T1 and T3 on the south side. Not all Etihad flights will be able to move, however, since the airline’s 20 per cent year-on-year growth will mean it’s too big for its new home. A new tunnel will connect the south side terminals with the Midfield complex.

It’s a truly massive structure: the largest building in the emirate of Abu Dhabi with 65 gates, as many as are planned for the entirety of Doha’s new airport. The first phase is set to hold 30 million passengers, just under Sydney’s total capacity and half the size of Dubai. And there’s more to come: a future satellite building will rise from the dusty ground in 2021-2022.

With over 250 aircraft on order, Etihad will need it.