Somehow in the blink of an eye 
, my incredible trip to the U.A.E 
is over, and I’m back home in Jackson 
writing up these return trip reports while watching the snow 
pile in the back yard and playing with Lilly and Yoda 
! For as long as I can remember, Dubai and the surrounding area has been on my bucketlist, and it was nothing short of exceptional!
All in all, I was there for 10 days. Each morning was breakfast at the hotel where I commited myself to only having Middle Eastern cuisine; my favorites were Yemeni lahoh which is kind of like a flatbread pancake 
and Shakshuka 
!
Over the days, I went boarding on the sand dunes 
, skiing at SkiDubai 
, the Dubai Aquarium where I got to “adopt” a Penguin 
whom I affectionately named Alberto, Swam with sharks 
at Atlantis Dubai, toured Emirates’ operations center which was awesome, cliff jumping, and more shopping at the night bizzars than I should admit 
(among lots of other stuff)! The last 2 days of the trip, I slowly made my way towards Abu Dhabi, and spent the day prior to our flight at Ferrari World Island 
!
Flight Information
Airline: Etihad Airways (EY)
Aircraft: Boeing B777-3FX(ER)
Registration: A6-ETC
Aircraft Age: 19.9 years (2006 built)
Depature Airport: Zayed International Airport (AUH/OMAA)
Departure Gate: 635C (Midfield Terminal)
Departure Runway: 31L
Seat: 20K Economy
Arrival Airport: Chicago O’Hare International Airport (ORD/KORD)
Arrival Gate: M17 (International Terminal (Concourse M))
Arrival Runway: 27C
Flight Time: 14hrs 30mins
Altitude: FL320, FL360, FL380, FL400
Speed: Mach 0.84/85
Overall Rating: 7.5/10
After a exillerating day 
and some late afternoon/mid-evening spotting to close out our time here, I hopped in a quick Uber 
to Abu Dhabi’s beautiful midfield terminal that home to most of Etihad’s operations and the other airlines. A very normal practice at airports in Afroeurasia is massive departure banks between 11pm and 3am to time arrivals for mid morning to early afternoon elsewhere in the world. Our flight – EY9, is a prime example of those operations – it leaves Abu Dhabi at 2:35am and lands in Chicago at 7:35am; this timing works perfect for the airline as it leaves Chicago late morning and arrives mid-afternoon the following day back in Abu Dhabi. Other departures like this including Washington Dulles, New York 
, London 
and Zurich 
. Becuase of these quirky operations, the airport is bustling with activity around midnight as if it was a mid-day rush; the night/morning of my flight, this was especially the case. Check in 
and Security took a combinded 45 minutes despite the fact that I arrived at 10:30 to give myself time to explore the airport and was even harder considering I was exausted from the day.
Having commited myself to having authentic breakfast’s, by the time I got to the airport in Abu Dhabi, I was craving the comforts of home and decided to stop at Mcdonalds for a Big Mac and fries 
, which I thoroughly enjoyed while admiring the insane arcitecture of Zayed airport and plane spotting – of which I saw both the “choose UK” and “choose Korea” A380’s that Etihad has, another B777-300ER that has their old livery, and the Manchester City 787-9! Before long it was time to head to gate 635 where boarding started at 1:00am on the dot! I boarded with group 
because I prepaid for a seat assignment to guarentee I got a window 
and a row to myself (which I ultimately did)!
Due to some delays with both catering 
and boarding , we left late just a few minutes passed 3am and joined the long line of aircraft taxiing to 31L. We ended up behind the choose UK heading to ironically London, a newly delivered A321neo to Delhi, and ahead of an Akasa max 8 to Bengaluru! If I was asleep before, I was awake during takeoff as those GE90s screamed to life to get 360 passengers, 20,000 lbs of cargo and 16hrs of fuel off the runway 
! The departure was beautiful as we flew over the city 
then the massive Persian Gulf under a moonless, star flooded sky 
! Over the course of the flight, I think I saw 15 different constellations and 10 shooting stars 
!
Etihad’s B777-300er’s come in 3 configurations; one having 3 classes of service and the other’s have 2 classes of service; our -300er oftered the more economy 
heavy configuration with a capacity of 402 people while the other 2-class one offers 3 more rows of buisness class seats behind the 2L/R door – totalling 370.
Across all configurations on the 77W, economy seats offer 31-33" of pitch, 17-18" of width and 3" of recline 
. As someone who is 5’2", I was more than comfortable for the flights and got to sleep flat 
. At the seat when I boarded was a bottle of water, earbuds, blanket and pillow, a small menu 
and a 10.6 inch E-BOX entertainment screen 
.
During the climb out of Abu Dhabi, I had my eyes 
glued to the window watching all the other traffic leaving the U.A.E ! We reached our initial cruising altitude right before flying over Doha 
, and soon after the flight attendants came by with drinks 
a snack and cold towellette; I went for a camonmile tea 
and orange juice because I needed to sleep. Soon after passing Kuwait 
, the first of 3 meal services started. Due to the funky time of the flight, the meals were based off Abu dhabi time which meant it was breakfast! Of the 3 options offered, I went with the zucchini 
and herb frittata with lamb merguez sausage and cannellini beans with tomato 
. This was served alongside a small bowl of fruit, vanilla greek yogurt and a suprisingly warm croissiant 
with butter and jam. I ate everything, and proceeded to pass out in my makeshift 3-seat bed.
I slept 
hard and I slept comfortably for about 5hrs, and woke up as we flew over Billund, Denmark 
, the home of LEGO, to the quiet sound of cuterly clinking in the galleys, and the smell of coffee 
! Due to the timezones and the position of the earth in mid-late northern winter, we were just barely starting to see a small glow on the horizon as the sun started to lighten Europe 
. Despite it being almost black outside, the F/As started another meal service that by Abu Dhabi time was lunch; I decided to skip the meal due to being full still from breakfast/late dinner 
and back to sleep for another 2 1/2 hours. Boring, yes… but I needed my sleep because I had a busy day in Chicago before my flight to Jackson.
After playing leap frog 
with the sunrise for nearly 2/3 of the flight, it finally started to get respectably bright out as we flew over Kangarlussuaq Greenland 
, and by this time I was rested, bored, and hungry . Despite the next meal being 3 hours away still, when I asked, the F/As were gracious enough to give me one of the leftove lunches – Chicken 
in honey mustard sauce with parsley mashed potatoes green beans and carrots 
was the only option left but I wasn’t complaining at all. It came with a small side salad and ranch, bread roll with butter and brié cheese, and an orange 
chocolate mousse; I accompanied this with an iced coffee and water since I was dehydrated and needing to wak
e up.
By this time, a fair bit of economy passengers had the same “waking up” idea as me, including a baby a few rows back which wasn’t entirely a fun noise to hear but I can’t be judging because that was once me. Despite being 20, I still travel with my stuffed animal moose 
and offered it to the parents for the rest of the flight; whom were a very kind Omani 
couple!
The sun finally rose 
above the horizon as we flew over the southern shore of Hudson Bay, which… is the second largest bay in the world, with a surface area of 1,230,000 sqkm 
! Around this time, the F/As started dinner by Abu Dhabi time but Chicago breakfast; it was a mix of menu items to fulfill both timezones, but I decided to skip it and just have another coffee, which I enjoyed while watching the sky go from purple to peach to blue and finally take a look through the IFE. I decided to to watch a few episodes of The Big Bang Theory, then bought wifi and finished watching Designated Survivor on Netflix, on my computer 
; and had the map on for the rest of the flight.
The rest of the flight was pretty uneventful; I dozed in an out of sleep and probably got another solid hour. Right before starting our initial descent 
, the crew came through with water 
, tea or coffee, and chocolates, as well as arrival immigration forms 
. As is a very iconic practice at O’Hare, we were doing a triple parallel landing with a JAL B777-300ER from Haneda 
to our right and a United Express CRJ550 from Dayton Ohio 
to our left! Not quite making it a quadruple parallel was an American B787-8 from Honolulu 
!
As is expected with the B777, the landing was incredibly smooth 
, and as is also expected at O’Hare, the taxi took 30 minutes do to a horrendously obscure route and the early morning bank of departures and arrivals.
Once at the gate, disembarkment went relatively quick and smooth, as did immagration 
, and soon I was finally back on U.S soil 
! I was able to sneak into a corner and get this picture but got yelled at unfortunately 
– but it was worth it because the sun was casting a beautiful glow on the lovely bird that brought us safely to Illinois!
