In May of this year Etihad unveiled the interior of their A380. They'll be taking delivery of the first of their 10 whale jets later this year. Given that roughly a dozen airlines already operate the A380, I wasn't expecting to see anything revolutionary beyond what we've already seen on other A380 operators, like onboard…
Continue reading: Tickets In Etihad’s The Residence Are Selling!
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Now, despite the fact that you want to emphasize the price, what is the lowest price one can get The Residence for, such as ex-CAI or ex-CMB, etc...
Did you look at expertflyer to see whether the first 10 bookings were indeed sold out?
Wow, this is so extravagant! If someone takes you as their guest would you agree to look at them longingly like the guy at 0.40 seconds? 😉
@ Joey -- ExpertFlyer doesn't actually show the Residence fare code, but from trying to do "dummy" bookings, it does indeed appear so.
@ Abdel Rahim Abdallah -- I haven't found a ticket in the Residence from anywhere for less than $20,000.
I also wonder whether a good number of those bookings were award bookings. I'm sure there are a few Etihad Guest gold elites who have over 2 million miles to burn. 😉
i actually think AUH-SYD is all that expensive for $20k... it's $10k pp for a super unique experience. if i had a boyfriend i would actually consider this, maybe for a honeymoon or something.
@ Joey -- Could be, though if I had to guess I'd say there are lots more people with too much cash than with too many miles in that part of the world.
I wonder if the tickets are fully flexible. The people that would normally be spending that sort of cash on a ticket would have very fluid schedules so I would not be at all surprised if they just booked the residence for 2-3 consecutive days and just cancelled the ones that weren't needed, last minute.
$20k or $40k is peanuts for big hitters. If you make $10 mil a year (which isn't really even that crazy) or just over $800k per month, maybe $400k after taxes, taking this a couple of times a year won't hurt you at all.
people are buying $20MM apartments here in nyc as simple investments. $40k RT is chump change to an increasing number of people worldwide. wish it wasn't so but it is.
@ Vik -- While you can change tickets for free, they're not fully refundable. Here are the fare rules:
"20% of fare value 30 days before dep
50% of fare value 29-7 days before dep
75% of fare value 6-3 days before dep
100% of fare value within 2 days of dep"
So even if you refund 30+ days before departure, you still only get 80% of the fare refunded.
The top 1% spending this kind of money is nothing for them. If they chartered a private jet and flew that same route it would cost much more than that I would imagine.
I would think price would come down in the future. Weren't the SQ A380 flights more expensive when it first came out? I remember reading about it and thought I'd never be able to fly on it cause of the price. Well I did get to but it was on points.