Etihad Airway’s financial troubles are out in the open now. They have had a heavy loss running over a billion dollars last year. They have had to lose their CEO because of this, and frequent service cutbacks are becoming the norm. Take for example, the withdrawal of the Etihad Airways limousine service across the world.

Their lounges in most part of the world are experiencing soft cutbacks as well. I visit the Paris lounge often, and breakfast is a sad image of its former self. But one of the benefit of being at some of their bigger locations such as Heathrow was the free spa that was operated there.

At London Heathrow, the Etihad Lounge lounge is shutting down the spa as of end of this month.

Here is the update from Etihad:

I am disappointed at this move, and this is only an indicator of the times to come. Trying to read the tea leaves, it tells me that Etihad will get out of whatever contractual commitments with other vendors when it comes to passenger experience, and this should reduce them to a part of their former self in a while. This also affects Jet Airways passengers who use the same lounge as well.

What will they do next? Pull out the Etihad Apartments and put in Economy seats there?

What do you make out of this latest cutback and the future of passenger experience at Etihad?