After spending $140 billion on upgrades, which Mid East carrier is now the best?

Dubai’s Emirates, Qatar Airways and Abu Dhabi’s Etihad have grown fast by creating more luxurious aircraft and offering better service than their established rivals: Qantas, British Airways, Air France, Lufthansa, and Iberia, along with all the US airlines. Now, with the ongoing conflict in the Middle East putting the trio under pressure to lure passengers, the Gulf carriers are trying to outgun each other.

“Competition in the region is crazy,” said Etihad CEO Antonoaldo Neves at the Arabian Travel Market (ATM) in Dubai this month. All three carriers showed off new products at the travel trade show.

Emirates targets the neglected class

Sir Tim Clark, the Briton who runs Emirates, reckons airlines have neglected economy-class travellers by concentrating on suites, bars and showers for business-class and first-class flyers. So he unveiled a new economy seat that is “a lot more comfortable, with more features, functionality and products”.

It comes in bright colours, unlike on most airlines, and has a new “U-Dream” headrest that adjusts both vertically and horizontally, with thick sides that fold down to create the perfect neck rest.

Sir Tim already operates the best premium-economy cabins on any carrier – downstairs at the front of Emirates’ Airbus A380 superjumbos or between business class and economy on its Airbus A350s and Boeing 777s. He has gone one better now by introducing a new seat that has the “U-Dream” head rest but also motorised recline and a large motorised divider between each seat to create greater privacy.

I sat in the seat in Dubai on Monday and it reminded me of the cradle seats that passed for business class in the 1980s. Premium-economy passengers get new Aveda amenity kits and the best wines in that cabin on any airline, including a Chablis Premier Cru 2024, a 2014 Bordeaux and Wiston Estate English sparkling.

Etihad doubles down on luxury

Etihad has eschewed premium economy and is instead introducing four rows of extra-legroom economy seats on its new A330neos – the only Gulf carrier to offer this. It is also doubling down on first class. At ATM, it introduced new first-class products for both its new Airbus A330neo wide-body jets and its Airbus A321LR narrow-body jets. Both come with doors that close for privacy, a new colour palette of greys, beiges and greens, a vanity mirror with a drawer full of ESPA products, wireless charging and snack tray.

This takes Etihad’s total first-class offerings up to five: a “super first class” three-room apartment, The Residence, and large Apartment suites with a separate bed and seat, plus showers, on its A380s; a first suite on its Boeing 787s; and the new suites on the A330neos and the A321LR.

Etihad’s new A330neo cabins have a new colour palette and its new first-class suite (pictured) includes a vanity mirror with Espa beauty products, wireless charging and a snack bar

Etihad’s CEO Antonoaldo Neves told Telegraph Travel that demand for first class was rising: “Wealth is there. People want to go first class. We will offer seamless first-class service in the right way for each aircraft on each route.”

Qatar Airways means business

Qatar is putting its golden eggs in the business-class basket. The latest version of its Qsuite business-class suite, was on display at the show.

It has a wall, containing a television screen, that divides each suite but, for the first time on any airliner, can also be folded back, allowing for a more sociable travel experience. With the dividing walls retracted, the quartet of seats in the middle of the cabin opens up into a small room, with seats that face each other, like a restaurant table for four. Each pair of seats converts into a double bed. Another “first” is a lockable drawer for valuables.

New kid on the Gulf block, Riyadh Air, has come up with the only business-class suite – Business Elite – that gives the Qsuite a run for its riyal. The Hafawa lounge at its King Khalid hub airport in Riyadh, with a fine-dining restaurant and cigar terrace, is also upping the ante; it’s the best combined business-class and first-class lounge in the Gulf.

A $US100 billion bet on peace

It might seem strange for the Gulf airlines to be making all these new investments – whose collective costs are around $US100 billion ($142 billion) – when the war in the region is far from over. But their bosses insist that aircraft are 70-80 per cent full – only around 10 per cent off pre-war capacity at this time of year.

Bookings for the crucial northern autumn and winter season are “looking quite great”, as Adnan Kazim, Emirates’s deputy president and chief commercial officer, put it. I flew to Dubai for ATM on Qatar Airways via its Doha hub, Hamad International, and there were only a handful of empty seats to and from London.

Many of those passengers are not stopping off in Dubai or Doha – “The flow is really working quite well between Asia and Europe and Europe to Asia,” notes Kazim – but for airlines a seat sold is a seat sold. Most governments and travel insurers have removed the Gulf states from their “No fly” lists.

Privately, all the airline CEOs concede that a resumption of hostilities could “change everything overnight”, as one put it. The Iranian drone strikes on Dubai Airport at the start of the conflict loom large in the memory of many travellers. But as the fragile peace just about holds, the arms race at 39,000ft shows no signs of letting up.

Indeed, Qatar Airways is planning a new first class on its forthcoming Boeing 777Xs, with what insiders say could be a suite with floor-to-ceiling walls to create a mini “apartment” in the sky. Emirates will soon unveil the new bar on its 777Xs. (Alas, there is no space for the showers that have been Emirates’s best perk on its A380s). And Etihad will open a new lounge at London Heathrow and its sixth type of “super first-class suite” for the 777X and the Airbus A350, as Neves puts it.

There will be only one group of winners in this battle. You and me, and other travellers.

The Telegraph, London