On my recent trip to the Seychelles I used an award ticket to fly from Dublin, via Frankfurt and Addis Ababa and on to the Seychelles.

I saw my B787 arrive at Frankfurt whilst still daylight, on its inbound flight from Addis Ababa.

Arriving at the gate, along a passage, down some stairs and through another security check, there was a long queue to board.

To get to the plane we had to go up a set of stairs and along the familiar jet bridge. I am unsure why Ethiopian has such a bad gate, but perhaps this is all they pay to receive, but it’s not a very good ground experience.

On boarding, the cabin seemed wide, but fairly spacious. It was my first time on a Dreamliner so I was keen to see how well all the feature were supposed to work.

Located as four rows of 2-2-2, the seats look slim, but in fact worked for me quite nicely.

This is a view from my seat in Row 2, showing the larger windows and overhead bins:

The standard seat arrangement and leg room:

Once boarding was complete I was able to move to Row 1, where I had two seats to myself and chose the window. However, it was noticeable that the exterior of the plane sweeps in quite a lot reducing the space a little. However, it was still and excellent amount of legroom.

The crew were friendly and came around with pre-departure drinks, menus and amenity kits.

The Amenity Kit, in bright lemon, contained sufficient items for a short 6 hour flight:

Just after take off, another round of drinks were offered. There was a choice of Champagne (Jacquart Brut Mosaique), a Chateauneuf du Pape, a Cabernet Sauvignon and a Chablis. Plus the usual soft drinks and a choice of beers – Meta, Meta Premium, St. George, Heineken and Carlsburg. The sprits were served from full sized bottles.

With the initial drink they served Kolo, an ultra-crunchy snack made from barley grains and lightly salted. Better than peanuts!

The front row had pop-up screens for the TV shows and movies offered. The other seats have monitors in the back of the seats in front. Noise reducing headsets were offered which plug in to the arm rest. There was a range of recent movies and US TV shows as well as some African and Asian movies.

For starter there was an ‘assembly’ of turkey breast, smoked trout with dill sauce:

Not being a fish person I left the trout but the rest of the food was tasty.

The choice of main courses were Grilled fillet of chicken breast, Grilled beef fillet and Pan Fried Salmon Steak. I chose the steak, which was nicely presented and tasty:

Dessert was a choice of cheese, forest berry cake, cherry vanilla cream cake and fruits. This is the cherry vanilla cake:

It was tasty enough and I had a nap until just before landing.

Breakfast was offered, although I declined – they had fruit salad, yoghurt, cereals and breads.

The six hour flight meant not much sleep, but as the beds are sloped I do not think I would have slept very much anyway. Comfortable enough I did feel slightly better when I disembarked than normal, which I suspect was due to the Dreamliner.

A good flight on an airline I have never flown before.