Flying the Other Classes

It happened to me yesterday: a business class seat on a five hour flight. No, I didn’t buy the ticket or upgrade or anything like that, but it happened. Here are some things about not flying coach that may be obvious to some people, but are very exciting when they actually happen to the rest of us: You get ear plugs and eye masks. You can have a glass of “champagne” while the plane is still at the gate. They hand out menus for dinner. There are breakable dishes. There are quilts. There is Toblerone. And there are all these other people getting the same stuff and you’re like “I know how I got here (luck, benevolence), but how did you all get here?” And you assume either big corporations paid for their tickets or they are using miles to upgrade because only an insane person would dole out another $889 on top of their regular ticket price for this junk. Some of them are [all of the above], yes, but a bunch of others spent $250,000 back in 1981 to have the privilege of sitting there forever and it turns out they got a pretty sweet deal. One airline, on the other hand, did not.