Etihad Airways vs United

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, and where each of these two sits among every carrier we price, on seat and on fare, is on The Best Airlines to Fly to Europe.

One thing separates them: seat

• Seat: Etihad Airways

  10/10 on the A350-1000 / 787-9 (Business Studio) against 8/10 on the 777 / 787 (Polaris).

Value is not scored here. One of these carriers flies fewer than three priced business routes in our grid, and a median built on one or two fares is not a median. Both are therefore scored on three dimensions rather than four, which is less evidence than the numbers above suggest.

Common questions

Is Etihad Airways or United better to Europe?

Etihad Airways scores 9.3/10 against United at 8/10 on seat, screens, lounge and fare. On the four dimensions we can verify, Etihad Airways wins 1 and United 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?

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