Etihad Airways Boeing B777 300ER 2 class V1 seat review by Robert McGowan #27257

Overall I rate this flight as pretty good. By the end of it I fealt like I had made a number of new friends (The Cabin crew!) Around about 3am a number of passengers were stretching their legs & talking in the rear area D. One of the cabin crew kept offering us some great snacks & it felt like we were having a party!

Having said that tho, their are still some things that could be improved on:-

1. the wait for drink & food at the start of the flight for food & drink was quite long. We took off at about 8.30pm & around about 10.30 were eating a full meal. Because a number of us were from NZ, our bodies were crying out for sleep not food. Although earplugs, headphones & eye covers were available, the cabin lights were
not dimmed until after all the empty plates etc. were collected. At this point in the 14Hr. flight (total predicted journey time of 34 hr.s) I really started to wonder whether I would be able to cope. Fortunately I eventually managed to get a short nap & this lifted my spirits somewhat. In total I probably only slept 1.5 - 2 hr.s on this night flight!
I am quite tall & had tried hard to check in 23h 55 min.s (5 min.s after the earliest time at which the process become available) before the flight commenced. My experience with their website was very frustrating & in fact somewhat scary!! I selected a seat with extra legroom (which was supposed to be available, but when I tried to move to the next screen I receiver an error msg informing me that the seat was not available & to try again. After a number of repetitions I, in desperation, tried to select my original seat number & this was not available either!! I then clicked the back arrow to see what seat No, I now had, The field was blank! so it looked as if all I had achieved (by staying up pretty late to access the service) was to lose my seat allocation!! The website was giving me false information & my original seat allocation was not changed !! Why did I even try!!

One other thing;- There were 2 buttons on the side of the seat rest, initially it seemed that the rear 1 allowed me to recline the seat, with some difficulty. Later on in the flight, it would not budge, even though there was room behind it. Eventually I mentioned it to a crew member, they were successful in moving it. It seemed that the front button was the correct one. IT WOULD BE GOOD IF THIS information was provided in the literature freely available in the brochures in the front or maybe even announced at the end of the safety talk (until the written instructions become available)