Etihad to squeeze luxurious first class on to its smallest planes

When Etihad Airways received its first Airbus A380 jets a good decade ago, the airline furnished the front of the giant double-decker with a veritable luxury playground it called the Residence, a three-room layout featuring a double bed, living area and shower cubicle — all with a personal butler on hand.

Etihad’s first Airbus A321LR is set to take off in August.

Now the Abu Dhabi-based carrier wants to squeeze its premium offering into far more constrained quarters: the narrow confines of an Airbus A321 long-range aircraft that joins its fleet in the next few months.

While Etihad has dispensed with its Residence servant in tailcoats and white cotton gloves, the airline promises amenities like sliding privacy doors, lie-flat seats, and large screens, all packed into an aircraft no wider than a city bus.

Etihad will squeeze a large first-class suite on to its Airbus A321s, which will occupy the first row.Credit: Design render

Etihad’s ambitious cabin layout highlights how the workhorse aircraft in the industry — the Airbus A320 family and the Boeing 737 — are increasingly pushing into spheres that were once the reserve of large planes. The A321LR and its longer-range sibling, the A321XLR, are built for long-distance routes from the UAE like Europe to India or across the Atlantic, meaning passengers expect amenities they’d typically enjoy when flying on much bigger aircraft.

The planes will also feature a business class with lie-flat seats.Credit: Design render

While budget carriers such as Jetstar and Europe’s Wizz Air have chosen to go the no-frills approach with their narrowbody long-range jets, other airlines are using the planes to expand premium service on longer routes without needing to fill the more fuel-guzzling and sometimes too-large widebody jets. Spanish carrier Iberia and JetBlue Airways deploy the aircraft on the lucrative trans-Atlantic route and provide business class with lie-flat seats.

Etihad is going one step further with its first-class offering, which occupies the first row of the A321LR. Passengers will also have access to a so-called “land and leave” service to skip the baggage carousel, as well as a limousine drive to the aircraft to bypass the shuttle bus whenever a plane is parked remotely from the departure building.

The airline is set to get 10 A321LR planes this year and will deploy them to destinations including Paris, Athens, Copenhagen, Riyadh and Zurich, with the first set to take off in August.

Etihad currently flies to Abu Dhabi from Sydney and Melbourne with a mix of Boeing 787 Dreamliner and 777 aircraft.

Bloomberg