I don't have your experience as I have only flown on this aircraft type once. My experience was pretty negative. We flew ET-AOO from ORD to ADD on August 29 this year. Even though the airframe is only 9 years old, the interior looks well used and on the border of being worn out. There were issues with the seat controls. I had to repeatedly use the seat controls to get even small adjustments in the configuration of the seat and the only controls that worked well were the ones for full upright and full bed mode. The padding in seat 2J was basically worn out and I could feel the metal frame through what was left of the padding. At 1.88m tall, I found the lack of a footwell pretty annoying. The footrest and the bottom end of the seat was also inoperative and I would tend to slide down in my sleep. Luckily the business class cabin was only about 30% - 40% occupied and I was able to grab extra bedding off unoccupied seats to supplement the lack of seat padding. If I had realized my seat had these issues, I would have grabbed one of the open interior pairs of seats but the other passengers were more experienced than I am and all these were grabbed within an hour or so of takeoff.

If this airframe is representative of the 10 oldest 788's that ET flies, they are in serious need of a refresh of some sort. If we fly ET on our next flights to southern Africa, we will probably route through IAD or YYZ to ensure we get a 777 or an A350.