Review of Etihad Airways flight from Rome to Abu Dhabi in Economy

An oldie but (still) a goodie

Hey guys, happy new year and welcome to my first FR of 2024!

This is will be the first of two FRs covering a 3 day trip to Abu Dhabi and is the last trip of 2023. I wasn't planning a trip to the UAE however when I saw Etihad selling tickets for €120 roundtrip from Rome, I jumped at the opportunity. For context, the base fare was actually cheaper than Wizz Air. However, like LCCs, checked baggage isn't included. That added €70 to the cost, bringing the total to €190. This is still a really good deal as Etihad usually charges a lot more than that from Europe to Abu Dhabi. 

The airline offers free seat selection during check-in. However if you prefer a specific seat, I'd recommend setting an alarm for when check-in opens (30 hours before the flight) as the seats are taken up very quickly. I really regret not paying for seat selection beforehand (for €20) as when I checked in 24 hours before the flight (at 8AM for me), all of the free window seats have already been taken, meaning that I paid €70 for an extra-legroom seat at the front. I should, however, mention that if you don't care about what seat you get, wait until the last minute before you check-in online. Why? It's because the normal economy seats will (obviously) be taken first, meaning that if you wait until the last minute, the airline will automatically assign you an extra-legroom seat for free as all the normal economy seats will have been taken. That's actually what happened to me except I got unlucky and got an aisle seat, meaning that I had to pay for a window seat. 

Still, I don't mind as it'll give me a chance to compare Etihad's extra legroom seats to normal economy (to be clear, this is not premium economy, the service is identical apart from the legroom). I also really, really wanted a window seat as this will be the only daytime flight of my trip. 

Yes, I flew back via Naples, the reason behind that is… complicated. 

I aim to offset all of my CO2 emission from flights. All emissions are calculated using the ICAO Carbon Emissions Calculator and I will be funding projects approved by The Gold Standard. The CO2 output for this flight is:

LGW-FCO-AUH: 356kg
Total for 2023 (so far): 4231kg 

As this flight was taken in 2023, I'm still including it in the 2023 total.

video report

Here's the video version of this FR, it's got pretty much the same thing content wise. 

Rome–Fiumicino International Airport (FCO)

I arrived around 4 hours before departure, which is when check in opens.

The main check in area. 

There's a small food court upstairs. 

Completely unrelated but I love the design of China Airlines' signs. I actually prefer the darker color scheme with the outline of the flowers to their actual livery (which is still really nice). Aside from flying, I also do a bit of graphics design (and photography) so analyzing airline liveries/logos is like 2 of my favorite things merged into one haha. 

Anyway, here's another photo of the check in area. This area is clearly much newer than the rest.

An interesting sculpture here - there's a lot of sculptures here in FCO. 

With it being 5:30AM, check in and security took no time at all and here's the duty free area. . 

It's just a standard duty free store with an Italian hint. 

There's a ton of shops here, except most of them weren't open yet. 

A bit of construction going on, not too sure what they're doing. 

One of the benefits of arriving so early is the lack of people in the terminal. It makes exploring and taking photos much, much easier. 

With ages to go until boarding, lets have a walk around the gates. 

A very blue walkway lit up by ITA adverts. 

A view of the gates. This area is generally used by ITA Airways, other non-Schengen airlines uses a satellite terminal, which we'll explore later. 

It's very nice and modern. 

There's also quite a lot of sculptures displayed here, which is quite cool. 

With ages to go until boarding, I decided to visit the Plaza Premium Lounge (I recently acquired Dragonpass with unlimited entries).

As you can see, it's very quiet. There's a good selection of pastries and fruits available however the seats here are very uncomfortable. It's like they went to the dollar store (or its Italian equivalent) and bought the cheapest seats they could find. The padding is non-existent and the whole chair is just a couple of metal wires. I know there's sofas on the right but it really isn't ideal, especially if you want to work.  

After about an hour in the lounge, it's time to head to the gate. Gates E31-44 is located in a satellite terminal, which requires a train ride for access.

The ride takes less than 3 minutes and here we are. 

Like the rest of the airport, it's very clean and modern. It's also quite interesting that departures is in the floor above the jet bridge, with the gates in the middle. I'm a huge fan of this setup as it gives people unobstructed views of the apron. 

With the sun rising, lets do some plane spotting! 

Neos Boeing 787-9 (EI-NEU) heading to Amritsar (ATQ) with a stopover at Milan (MXP). 

Air China Airbus A330-300 with the '50th A330 for Air China' sticker (B-5977) heading to Hangzhou (杭州) (a city near Shanghai). It's a rather interesting route by Air China as it's one of only 3 European routes from the city, the other being Lisbon and Madrid. 

View of the runway. 

China Airlines Airbus A350-900 (B-18906) arriving from Taipei (TPE). 

the flight

Flight time today will be around 5 hours and here's our route: 

And here is our plane: 

Some info about our plane:

Type: Boeing 777-300ER
Registration: A6-ETE
First flight: 23 January 2006
Age: 18 years
Config: C28/Y384

A plane with a rather interesting history. When I looked up the registration, all the photos on planespotter.net and jetphotos.com showed her in the full Etihad livery so you can imagine my surprise when she turned up in a temporary livery. She was delivered to Etihad in May 2006 and flew with the airline until the pandemic, when she was stored. During that time, she was deregistered from Etihad's fleet (to be retired). However I guess with the demand for travel post-pandemic, the airline took her back and she only came out of storage on 16 November 2023, 13 days before the date of this flight. 

Boarding of the main economy cabin is done back to front. This means that because I paid for an extra legroom seat at the front of the plane, I was the last to board.

Photo of the seats. The cabin was pretty full when I boarded so this is the best I could do sadly.

Here is the IFE and tray table. It's obviously going to be quite an old cabin (there's a reason why Etihad retired her) but it doesn't look too bad. It's honestly better than new cabins on some European airlines.

From left to right, there's a coat hook, universal power outlet, IFE remote, USB port (with covers) and I have no idea what the round black thing is. It's a port with 9 little holes (like a VGA port but small and round?) honestly never seen it in my life.

Here's the legroom for the extra-legroom seats.

And here's the legroom for the normal economy seats (taken on my inbound flight). As you can see, there's a huge difference but it is worth €70? I'd say yes especially if you're tall but, as I mentioned, these seats get handed out for free during online check-in (when there's no more normal economy seats left) so it might be worth waiting until check-in to pay as the price is the same. 

On each seat is also a blanket.

And a pillow.

Headphones are also provided - these are fairly high quality, much better than the cheap flimsy ones with terrible audio quality on some airlines.

For some reason, there's 2 recline buttons. Not too sure why.

Another really tiny detail but there isn't a bar separating the window and middle seat, it actually gives you so much more space than usual. 

First view out of the window with a good look at the Air China A330. 

Taxiing to the runway. 

After about 15 minutes of queueing, we're finally off to Abu Dhabi. 

The Apennine Mountains - a mountain range that runs the length of the Italian Peninsular. 

I do quite like this engine view on the 777. My favorite seat will always be behind the wing but this is a close second. 

Lets have a look at the Wi-Fi onboard.

News, arrival information and a weather forecast is available, along with eMagazines for free. 

Here are the prices - it's reasonable at $10 for the full flight. 

A short while later, the crew came around with lunch. There were three options: chicken, lamb or vegetarian. I went with the chicken. The hot meal came in a hard plastic container, which are designed to be recycled unlike the cheap disposable ones on most airlines. Along with the main, there was a bun with butter, a cheesecake and a salad. This is honestly one of the best economy meals I've seen (both in quality and quantity) except the salad, which was horrible. But overall, a very nice meal. 

With lunch done, lets have a look at the IFE. 

While Air India's 777s hold the title of the slowest IFE I've seen, this is a close second (aided only by the working touchscreen). The menu for movies and TV shows took about 30 seconds to load.

But once it does load, you'll understand why it takes so long. There's 200+ movies and 500+ shows (although a lot of them are information on customs/immigration of various countries). And yes, I did scroll to the very end to take photo 4 and 7. It took 5 minutes to scroll through all of the TV shows alone, which was exhausting for my arm haha. 

All in all, it's a really good IFE content wise but that's also its downfall. The system just isn't designed to cope with so much content (hence the long loading times) but I can imagine it being amazing on the new systems of the 787/A350. 

There's also a moving map. 

And front/side cameras, which isn't something you see very often. 

View over eastern Turkey. 

Lets have a look at the contents of the seatback pocket, which includes:

- A safety card

- An air sickness/waste bag

- And an inflight magazine. 

Over the desert of Iran. 

Pretty soon, we're starting our descent into Abu Dhabi. 

Welcome to Abu Dhabi! Here's a view of the terminal building. 

Parked next to an Etihad A380. 

Abu Dhabi International Airport (AUH)

Walking to baggage reclaim. 

This is the brand new Terminal A at Abu Dhabi. It opened on 31st October 2023, a month before this flight. There'll be an in depth review of the terminal in my next FR back to Rome. 

With 90% of the passengers transiting to an onward destination, there were no queues at passport control (despite only two counters being open). 

The baggage reclaim area. Despite the lack of people, it took 30 minutes for my bag to arrive. 

And here's the arrivals area landside. 

One last photo outside the terminal.

There's a (very camouflaged) cat on the bottom right of the photo. I actually didn't notice its existence until I was writing this FR right now. 

That concludes my first FR of 2024. I've attached a tourism bonus of my time in Abu Dhabi (it's an amazing place for photography). Thanks for reading and once again, happy new year!