Magic Carpets Still Exist
December 6, 2008 | Uncategorized
I travel a lot and remember years ago when First and Business Class were…well, classy. I haven’t flown First on a U.S. carrier in some time and Business basically doesn’t even exist any longer in the US. To many First doesn’t even measure up to what Business was some years back.
The abysmal airline service we’ve been enduring in the US will surely get better — and just as surely get even worse first — but we’re likely never to see the quality of service we’ve had in the past.
This is why I found a recent flight — on a carrier you may never have heard of — really refreshing.
My wife and I flew Etihad Airways, the national carrier of the United Arab Emirates (Etihad, in fact, means “united” in Arabic). It’s a fairly new carrier — it’s just turned five years old, adding an average of ten destinations a year — and on a recent trip from Italy to Asia, we chose it because I found a good deal for Business Class on its website.
It turned out to be our magic carpet flight back in time — back about 40 years ago on most US carriers, to be exact.
Etihad’s planes are modern and comfortable — Business class seats with massage units and flat beds and tons of on-demand food, wine and entertainment. Sure, biz-class niceties such as these have become pretty standard with more upscale Mid-East carriers, but the real difference is Etihad’s crew of multi-national attendants who are superb. And this was no fluke since over a period of about two weeks we took four different flights and the experience was the same on all.
I asked one of the attendants a question about First Class, and she immediately — and proudly — asked if we’d like to see it. Take a look at the video below which I quickly shot — nothing but tables and flat screens up front for those workaholics.
Yes, you could say we were only comfortable because we were in Biz class. But when I walked back through economy to get a truer impression of the overall service, I didn’t see any uncomfortable or unhappy campers there either, to use a bad analogy. And the seat configuration back there is set so you’re never more than two seats off the aisle. It’s an excellent airline that I just read was voted the ‘world’s leading first class airline’ at this year’s World Travel Awards.
Unfortunately, in North America you can only fly it from New York (JFK) and Toronto to Abu Dhabi (where, thank God, they’re about to open a new terminal). Too bad they’re not allowed to fly in the US since they’d bring the meaning of service back to where it was circa 1970.
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Jim Ferri
