Your very own suite in the sky
Airline offers private three-room cabin with butler … for just £12,500 one way!
JETSETTING VIPs who value their privacy – and their leg room – can now check into the world’s first luxury penthouse suite on a commercial airliner.
The British- designed apartment in the air comprises three linked rooms – a bedroom with a double bed, an ensuite bath- room with a shower and a living room featuring a long leather sofa, digital TV and mini-bar.
It even comes complete with its own Savoy-trained butler. Called ‘The Residence’, the suite offers a level of privacy which has until now only been available to those with a private executive jet. And you will need a high-flyer’s bank balance to afford it – it costs £12,500 to hire the entire suite for either one or two people for a single Etihad Airways flight from London to Abu Dhabi, which takes seven hours.
The 125sq ft cabin on the Airbus A380 superjumbo is being billed as ‘the only three-room suite in the sky’. Only the butler can enter and even then, only by invitation when the occupants ring a buzzer. The suite’s creators, London-based Acumen Design Associates – responsible for British Airways’ first lie-flat bed – won top prize for it in the respected Society of British Interior Design awards this year.
Designer Anthony Harcup said: ‘It’s the most private mile high club you can get. It is the first time a mini-suite compartment for two people has been approved by safety officials.’ Peter Baumgartner, chief commercial officer of the United Arab Emirates’ national airline, said: ‘ For a three-room cabin, it’s not overpriced.
‘Effectively it’s four times the price of a first class ticket, so that’s double if you’re travelling in a couple.’
There will be Residence suites on ten of the A380 jets, fashioned in different colour schemes, after a daily service begins next Saturday.