The challenge: 80 hours, 3 airlines, 1 winner
Travel vlogger Bobby Briskey, the creator behind the LivingBobby channel and its 2.87 million subscribers, set himself a simple premise for this 29 minute and 50 second video: three different airlines were each named the world number one first class by a different ranking this year, so he flew all three to decide which one is actually the best. The trip ran from Australia to America, Sydney to Singapore to Abu Dhabi to Dubai to Chicago, and stretched to 80 hours of first class travel. As he puts it in the official description, “I flew first class for 80 hours in the world’s #1 first class!” The combined tickets cost up to $100,000. That works out to $1,250 for every hour of the journey, door to door.
The three contenders are Singapore Airlines, Etihad Airways, and Emirates. The video opens with the challenge at 0:00, moves to the Singapore Airlines review at 0:27, the Etihad Airways comparison at 9:37, and the Emirates final showdown at 20:14. By the end he crowns a winner, and the comments section, all 660 of them, is still arguing about it.
1. Singapore Airlines flies in as the Skytrax champion
Singapore Airlines enters the video carrying the heaviest trophy case. At the Skytrax World Airline Awards 2025, held on June 17, 2025 at the Paris Air Show, Singapore Airlines was named the World Best First Class airline, beating more than 325 airlines in the survey. It also took Best Cabin Crew and Best Airline in Asia, and finished second overall behind Qatar Airways. Its A380 Suites product also won the World Best First Class Seat and Best First Class Catering awards at the same ceremony.
The Suites cabin is famously exclusive. There are only 6 Suites on each A380, and the center pairs combine into a full double bed that measures 76 inches long by 27 inches wide, or 1.93 meters by 0.68 meters. The suites span roughly 3.23 to 4 square meters, making them some of the largest in commercial aviation. Singapore Airlines is spending $852 million on a retrofit program for its long haul fleet, and the suites sit at the top of that investment.
His Singapore Airlines A380 Suites journey starts the video because the Skytrax crown is the freshest claim of the three. For reference, the crown has since moved on: at the Skytrax awards on September 18, 2026 at the Langham in London, Air France took World Best First Class for its new La Première suite, with Singapore Airlines finishing second. The video was published on August 21, 2026, less than a month before that changing of the guard.
2. Etihad Airways is the “most luxurious” entry
Etihad arrives in the video as the airline “rated the number one first class, but also the most luxurious.” Its flagship first class product is the First Apartment, available on its A380s. There are only 9 First Apartments per aircraft, arranged in a single aisle cabin, the first of its kind on a widebody jet. Each apartment has a Poltrona Frau leather lounge chair with an ottoman that opens into an 80.5 inch long fully flat bed, a 24 inch swiveling LCD television, a personal vanity unit, and 74 percent more space than the airline previous first class suites. A fully equipped shower room is reserved for the exclusive use of first class guests, and The Lobby lounge and bar sits between the first and business cabins for social time.
Lurking above the First Apartment is the product that still defines Etihad excess: The Residence. It is a three room private suite, a living room, a separate bedroom, and an en suite shower room, measuring 125 square feet or 11.61 square meters, located at the front of the upper deck. There is exactly 1 per A380. The living room has a two seat reclining sofa in Poltrona Frau leather, a chilled mini bar, a dining table, and a 32 inch television. The bedroom has an 82 inch long bed and a 27 inch screen. Guests were historically served by a dedicated butler trained at the Savoy Butler Academy in London. When it launched, a one way ticket between Abu Dhabi and London cost around $20,000, and more recent coverage has put the experience at up to 50,000 pounds. Commenters on the video specifically asked why he did not test the three room suite, which tells you how mythic it remains.
3. Emirates brings the shower at 40,000 feet
The final leg is Emirates, the product most viewers already know by reputation. The Emirates A380 first class cabin has 14 fully enclosed private suites in a 1-2-1 layout on the upper deck, each with a 26 inch personal screen, motorized sliding doors, a vanity mirror, and a personal wardrobe. The two signature features are the pair of onboard Shower Spas reserved for first class passengers and the walk up Onboard Lounge bar shared with business class.
The shower is the detail that makes the Emirates leg unmistakable. Each passenger gets a 30 minute appointment in one of the shower suites, with running water rationed to about 5 minutes through a metered system that lets you pause and restart the flow. The suites are stocked with premium VOYA products. It is engineering as theater, turning a tightly rationed resource into the most memorable amenity in the sky.
The scale behind the product is enormous. Emirates operates 116 Airbus A380s in 2026, the largest A380 fleet on earth, flying more than 3,600 flights per week to 137 destinations in 77 countries. The airline was founded in 1985 with $10 million and two leased aircraft. In first class, Emirates holds an exclusivity agreement to serve Dom Pérignon, with first class passengers receiving it as part of the standard offering. An earlier review of the Emirates Game Changer first class on the 777 shows how the two Emirates flagships differ, with the 777 offering newer technology but no shower and no walk up bar.
4. The winner: Singapore Airlines, and the internet disagrees
After 80 hours, the verdict in the video goes to Singapore Airlines. That outcome set the comment section on fire. The top comments, several with hundreds of likes, argue the crown should have gone to Emirates, crediting the service and the caviar in particular. Other viewers debated whether the famous 8 second call button response in Singapore was staged or just a coincidence, and several long time first class flyers made the case for Emirates based on the chauffeur drive, the Dubai first class lounges with direct boarding, and the shower.
The disagreement is the point. Each of the three products wins on a different axis: Singapore on the suite and the seat, Etihad on sheer space and the Residence mystique, Emirates on the shower and the service rituals. A single winner is a video device. The rankings that sent him on the trip could not agree either, which is why three airlines each carried a number one claim in the first place.
5. The food ranges from caviar to fast food
One of the most replayed elements of the video is the dining. The thumbnail says it all: the creator in a white bathrobe, seated on the first class bed, with three gold rimmed plates holding french fries, a double cheeseburger, and a full tin of caviar on ice. The video description promises everything from burgers and pizza to steak and caviar, and he treats the 80 hours as a chance to review airplane food as its own discipline, fast food one moment, luxury the next.
That spread is honest about what top tier first class has become. The dine on demand model on Emirates and the Book the Cook pre order system on Singapore mean the galley functions more like a restaurant than a fixed menu service. A passenger can order a burger at 3 AM and caviar at noon, and the crew treats both as normal. The gold plates in the thumbnail are not staging. First class plating on these carriers is genuinely that theatrical.
6. The route math: two continents, four layovers, 80 hours
The itinerary runs Sydney to Singapore to Abu Dhabi to Dubai to Chicago. The opening leg, Sydney to Singapore, covers roughly 3,907 miles or 6,288 kilometers, with nonstop flights taking about 8 hours and 30 minutes. The final leg, Dubai to Chicago, is the long one: 7,228 miles or 11,633 kilometers, flown daily as Emirates flight EK235 with a scheduled time between 14 hours 50 minutes and 15 hours 10 minutes. Together with the Singapore to Abu Dhabi and Abu Dhabi to Dubai segments, plus ground time and connections in four cities, the full journey stretches to 80 hours.
That time scale changes what the suites are for. A 15 hour transpolar sector is not a meal with a nap attached. It is closer to checking into a hotel that happens to move at 560 miles per hour. The double beds, the showers, and the lounges stop being amenities and start being the actual product, which is exactly the comparison the video keeps circling back to: suites as big as five star hotel rooms.
7. The $100,000 price tag, itemized in spirit
The description says the tickets cost “up to $100,000” across the three airlines, making this the most expensive first class journey of his career and the sequel to his earlier 50 hour, $75,000 ticket video. For context on how the math gets there: a single one way Etihad Residence ticket launched at around $20,000 and has been priced as high as 50,000 pounds, while Singapore Airlines Suites and Emirates first class on ultra long haul sectors routinely price in the five figures per segment. Stack three of the world most expensive cabins across four flight segments and $100,000 stops looking like a marketing number.
The cost per hour is the stat that lands hardest: $100,000 divided by 80 hours is $1,250 per hour, door to door. That is roughly the price of a night at a luxury hotel, spent every single hour, for more than three days. One top comment put it dryly: there are no free things on a $100,000 ticket, only prepaid things.
8. The numbers behind the channel
The video itself is a data point in the luxury travel economy. Published on August 21, 2026, it runs 29 minutes and 50 seconds and has drawn 1,697,279 views, 18,987 likes, and 660 comments as of this writing. The LivingBobby channel has 2.87 million subscribers, built largely on 24 hour challenge formats: $1 versus $1,000 versus $10,000 versus $100,000 hotel stays, world cheapest versus world most expensive countries, and a steady drumbeat of first class videos including the $86,000 ticket record breaker and the $75,000 ticket predecessor to this one.
The appetite is consistent. Viewers keep clicking because the format turns an abstract luxury into something measurable: how many hours, how many dollars, how many suites. The article you are reading exists for the same reason. The video cannot be skimmed, searched, or compared side by side. The numbers can.
By the numbers
- 1,697,279: YouTube views on “80 HOURS in the WORLD’S #1 RATED FIRST CLASS ($100,000 Ticket)!”, published August 21, 2026
- 29:50: video runtime, with chapters at 0:00 (challenge), 0:27 (Singapore Airlines), 9:37 (Etihad), and 20:14 (Emirates)
- 80: total hours of the first class journey, Sydney to Chicago via Singapore, Abu Dhabi, and Dubai
- 100,000: dollars, the upper bound of the combined ticket cost, or $1,250 per hour
- 2,870,000: subscribers on the LivingBobby channel
- 18,987: likes and 660: comments on the video
- 6: private Suites on each Singapore Airlines A380, with a double bed of 76 by 27 inches (1.93 by 0.68 meters)
- 3.23 to 4: square meters per Singapore Airlines Suite
- 852,000,000: dollars in Singapore Airlines long haul fleet retrofit investment
- 325: airlines covered by the Skytrax 2025 survey that named Singapore Airlines the World Best First Class
- 9: Etihad First Apartments per A380, each with an 80.5 inch fully flat bed and a 24 inch television
- 125: square feet of Etihad The Residence, the three room suite with a Savoy trained butler
- 20,000: dollars, the original one way price of The Residence between Abu Dhabi and London
- 14: Emirates A380 first class suites in a 1-2-1 layout, each with a 26 inch screen
- 2: onboard Shower Spas reserved for Emirates first class, with 5 minutes of metered running water per 30 minute appointment
- 116: Airbus A380s in the Emirates fleet in 2026, the world largest
- 3,600: flights per week operated by Emirates to 137 destinations in 77 countries
- 3,907: miles from Sydney to Singapore (6,288 km), about 8 hours 30 minutes nonstop
- 7,228: miles from Dubai to Chicago (11,633 km), flown daily as Emirates EK235 in 14 hours 50 minutes to 15 hours 10 minutes
Watch the video
The verdict, in one line
Singapore Airlines won the video, Emirates won the comments, and Etihad won the argument about which suite feels the most like a private jet. Watch all 80 hours compressed into 30 minutes above, then decide which of the three you would pick if the $100,000 ticket ever had your name on it.
