Etihad A3501000 Review of Economy Class with Tom Otley, Editor of Business Traveller magazine.

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Transcript:
Hello, my name's Tom Otley from Business Traveller, and here we are, at Heathrow terminal three, ready to fly on Etihad's new A3501000 aircraft from London to Abu Dhabi. There's two economy cabins. Right now, I'm sort of halfway down the first one. What I'm gonna do is walk down the cabin, show some of the extra legroom seats, they call it economy space, which are the first five or six rows of the front cabin, and then we'll have a look at the seats. I'll sit in the window seats, and we'll see how much room there is, and also try and identify some of the seats that it would be best to avoid. And the first thing about this aircraft, it's an A3501000, it's a big aircraft, you know, it's wonderful. Obviously, it's brand new, so, all new aircraft do seem nice, but a lot of space overhead, even with all of these, the compartments, and they've made a lot of improvements to these compartments over the years, so you can actually fit bags in, not just flat, but on their side, which means you can fit more of them in, and that makes sense, because then people aren't having trouble when they're the last on board to fit their bags onboard. I'm sitting in row 26 in a normal economy seat. They have these headrests on one side, it's not like the ones where you just tilt on either side, it's always on one side, and, I guess, the point of it is you're gonna rest on one side and not fall onto the person in front when you're sleeping. Legroom is pretty good, I'm sort of 5'11'', I've got kind of an inch around where my knees are, you've got this new device here, I don't know if you can see, this is the table, then you've also got a sort of folddown thing under the inflight entertainment screen, which allows you to put your own device there, and because you've got the USB, the normal USB and USBC, you can keep it charged and out of the way, and still eat your food, so, you could have your own entertainment. And this tilts, so, when the person in front puts the seat back, then they've got a chance. I'm just gonna tilt it and see what it looks like. One sec. Still there? Okay, so, this is the worstcase scenario, I'm now sitting up, because I wanna do some work and the person in front, 'cause they're ignorant, has reclined back. I wouldn't be able to work, to be honest, I'd be able to read something maybe, but at this point, I would be forced to go back as well. So, must watch. Now I'm back. I could sleep like this, but I couldn't do any work, I could read, the screen tilts, so, I'd be okay with that, but it's not perfect, but that's longhaul traveling economy. There are 45 economy space seats, it isn't that there's six rows, there's actually five rows, but the front row doesn't count, because it's a bulkhead. So, if we look at it, these are the economy space we're talking about now, so, we've got row 20, now, that doesn't count, that's the front row, but that's obviously got extra leg room, because it's the front row, so, then what we're looking at is the next five rows, those are the ones that we'll be sold as economy space, and that is not row 20, it's 21, 22, 23, 24, and 25. And since there's nine seats in each row, that's five nines, which is 45, which is how many economy space seats there are. There's two cabins of economy class, I'm in the rear cabin now. This doesn't look to have any of the economy space, but, of course, if you're in the front row, which is row 38, that'll probably be bassinets there, I would imagine, so, if you've got kids, young kids, those would be the ones to go for. And then going back one, row 39, that's got legroom, 'cause obviously you're by the door, so, if you wanted to get extra legroom without paying for it, although they may charge for these seats, so, I guess, it's all in revenue management, you'd go for row 38 in the back cabin, and then 39, it would be A, B, C, and then H, J, K, I'll just show you that, so, you see that? So, back cabin on the A3501000, you'd want row 38 or 39 if it was at the sides. That's one side, and that's the other. Then let's walk back and have a look at the economy cabin to see if there's any really bad seats. By just asking what the seat pitch, which is the legroom, for the normal seat is, it seems to be 31 inches, and you get an extra four inches. Now, so, let's go to the back. The back row here is row 56. Now, from one point of view, that's great, because you can recline your seat backwards and not disturb anyone, or get banged, but look what's behind, that's the toilet, and one row to definitely avoid is the very back row, which is 57, D, E, and G, 57, D, E, and G, because you've got a toilet there, and you've got a toilet there, so, unless you're the sort of person who wants to go to the toilet the whole time, avoid it......