Etihad Airways vs SWISS

Best product each one flies

Scored on what can be verified. Service, food and ground recovery are absent deliberately: they need someone in the seat, and they live in the reviews rather than here.

One caveat on the Value line, stated rather than buried: Value is computed from business fares, and a carrier with too few of them does not get a Value score at all. Where you see a dash, we have fewer than three priced business routes for that airline and did not want to invent a figure from one or two — so its product score is the mean of three dimensions rather than four, and it is not directly comparable to a score built on hundreds of fares. The airlines with the most fares behind them are named on the business-class ranking.

Dimension by dimension

• Seat: Etihad Airways

  10/10 on the A350-1000 / 787-9 (Business Studio) against 5/10 on the A330-300.

• IFE: level

  Screens, connectivity and power: 8/10 against 8/10.

• Lounge & bags: level

  What the fare includes before you board: 10/10 against 10/10.

Common questions

Is Etihad Airways or SWISS better to Europe?

Etihad Airways scores 9.3/10 against SWISS at 7.3/10 on seat, screens, lounge and fare. On the four dimensions we can verify, Etihad Airways wins 1 and SWISS wins 0. Service and food are not scored here because they cannot be read off a spec sheet.

Does the aircraft change the answer?

Not on seat: both carriers fly a consistent product across the aircraft we have verified.

Has Jon flown either of these?

SWISS, in business on a Europe route. Etihad Airways has not been flown, so nothing here claims firsthand experience of its cabin.