I booked one of these:

EY AY CDG-NRT J RT less than 1650 euros

The routing was CDG-AUH-NRT on Etihad, in Business. The return was NRT-NGO (ANA in Economy), NGO-AUH (via PEK on Etihad, in Business), AUH-CDG on Etihad, in Business. All on one PNR.

No issues with the outbound flights. For the return leg, I wasn’t able to check in for the ANA flight until I got to the airport. The ANA flight was on a 787 and my partner and I were given seats in row 2. I was looking forward to that flight. After receiving our boarding passes, we had a quick drink in the ANA arrivals lounge and then went through security in the South Terminal of Terminal 1.

We were due to depart on NH495 and then pick up EY889 from Nagoya back to Abu Dhabi. NH495 was scheduled to depart at 18:25. This was Saturday 4 May 2019. There wasn’t much airside, so we sat by the gate. We had about 35 to 40 minutes before boarding was due to commence.

At that point, a representative from Etihad appeared and confirmed our names. He explained that there were air traffic delays and we might not make the connection in Nagoya to our Etihad flight. The connection time was 2 hours and 5 minutes. He anticipated our ANA flight leaving about an hour late but it could be longer. He offered to transfer us on to a direct Etihad flight to Abu Dhabi, in Business, which would depart in about 30 minutes time (EY871) - 17:55 departure.

We accepted and we were escorted back through security, to the north part of the terminal, to collect our new boarding passes. We were then escorted through security then immigration and on to the gate of the Etihad flight. There were a few stragglers and we boarded with about 10 minutes to go before the scheduled departure time.

At the ticketing desk in Narita, we were given the option of getting the earlier flight to Paris (departing about 2 hours after our arrival in Abu Dhabi) or sticking with our original flight, departing at 08:55. We decided to stick with that, so Etihad put us up in a hotel in Abu Dhabi. This was a bit of a faff but we needed some sleep and didn’t need to be in Paris any earlier than our original plans.

I asked the the agent how he’d managed to spot us at the gate when we were waiting for the ANA flight. He said he could see that we’d used the ANA lounge, so had checked the monitors there to identify us.

The ANA flight did indeed depart an hour late but made some time up, arriving 30 minutes late. The Etihad flight from Nagoya also departed late. It was delayed by about 2 hours. Nevertheless, I thought this was excellent customer service. It’s over and above anything that I’ve experienced before, which is why I posed the question in the title. Was I missing something or do Etihad really go the extra mile?

Palmer