I await your trip report with interest.
A friend has just done Auckland, Manchester via Melbourne and Abu Dhabi with Etihad to attend a funeral (the only time she comes back to the UK is for such events),and unfortunately it was dire. Rude staff, uncaring, food offer and IFE was very poor for such a long flight.
Her last trip was about 5 years ago with Emirates and the two just don't compare.
Needless to say Etihad have not responded to her complaint two weeks after she arrived home.
Thanks, and I'm sorry to hear she had a bad experience. I watch aviation trip report videos pretty much daily on YouTube and I've not yet seen one with a negative view on Etihad. Emirates does always get a lot of praise, but that doesn't surprise me as they do seem to be on top of their game.
Etihad not responding to her complaint, and what you've commented on above, does not bode well for my upcoming flights with them. Indeed, the lack of response sounds similar to what I had with Norwegian in response to my long list of complaints in March 2016 and their lack of any interest in actually responding to them.
I do hope it won't be as bad as what your friend endured, only one way to find out. They've responded swiftly and professionally to my queries to them via Twitter so far, so that's a good start. To be fair, if I could have afforded the trip to be with Emirates I probably would have taken that option up. I would have loved to do it on Qantas, but they wanted silly money.
I will, for the Sydney trip, have both the written report on this forum, the written report with photos on my Wordpress blog and all being well a YouTube aviation trip report too. I'm also hoping to do a short destination report video too, as part of a new project, highlighting some of the best bits of my trip.