This Trip, Part II: 22-23 March 2011

There is no question that flying First Class (or whatever's equivalent) is truly a wonderful thing. The seats are bigger. The service is more attentive. The drinks are plentiful. The drinks are free. Mainly, though, the seats are bigger. This accomplishes two things: Obviously, by being bigger, there is more cushioning, which in theory makes the seat more comfortable. However, this extra size and padding also inherently positions you farther away from your neighbor than usual. This is the key advantage. Elbow space is not shared. Feet don't bump. People who like to look out the window, yet book seats on the aisle, aren't breathing on you.

The drawback of First Class is that, unless you only fly First Class, it is such a tease. You never want to fly anything but First Class after the first time. Problem is, tickets in First Class are intentionally priced at a prohibitively high level and earning enough frequent flier miles to earn status for such perks is also time consuming and, accordingly, quite expensive. Having done a fair amount of travel in 2010 for work, I have managed to get myself just barely into the realm of upgrades. Unfortunately, the only upgrades I have ever gotten are Salt Lake City to Las Vegas (a flight that covers not even the north-south length of the State of Utah), Las Vegas to Salt Lake City (ditto) and Salt Lake City to Atlanta on a red-eye (this may sound nice, but the only reason I was on this flight in the first place was because a delay in Vegas made me miss my direct connection to BNA in SLC, so I had to fly over-night to Atlanta and catch the first flight of the morning to BNA in time for work that day).

So add another trip to my First Class upgrade ledger. Nashville to Atlanta. 35 minutes in the air. 35 minutes of First Class ego-inflating. I was literally sitting in the chair longer while we were on the ground than when we were in the air. However, I suppose sitting in the First Class cabin is better than sitting at the gate in the terminal. Seriously though, First Class on a 35 minute flight is such a tease when you know you've got an 8-hour flight in Coach/Economy/Whatever coming up. I was actually not bothered when we arrived in ATL, only to find out our arrival gate was still occupied by a departing plane, so we had to sit around and wait about 15 minutes. All told, from initial boarding to final disembarking, my trip to First Class lasted about an hour and a half.

Despite being almost 11pm EDT, Terminal B at ATL still had that usual miserably crowded and noisy atmosphere that can only be expected at that airport. Thankfully Terminal E was quite quiet (yep), except for the blaring broadcast of the Hawks/Bulls game (which the Bulls won by about 749 points) on the TVs in the gates. Terminal E just doesn't have that same "Green Hills on a Saturday afternoon" feel to it as the rest of Atlanta, or excuse me, Hartsfield-Jackson International, Airport. It almost felt like something was missing.

At least the long flight was on a 767-400, which uses a passenger entry point between First Class and Coach. It would have really stung if I had to walk through First Class to get to my measly seat 17A. It soon became apparent that our 11:50pm-departing flight to Heathrow was not going to be a crowded one. A collective sigh of relief must have emanated from everyone on board (or at least in Coach) when they realized the possibility of sleeping might be more likely with 2 or 3 seats to themselves and a statistically lower probability of a screaming baby. One baby really tried to prove that statistics lie when we were taking off, but thankfully the statistics won out and the baby was not heard from again.

Sadly, on the opposite end of the age spectrum fell the man sitting directly in front of me. Actually, his assigned seat was 16B, but once he realized 16A was vacant, he became the occupant of both. Not really a problem in itself, especially since I had 17A&B to myself, but he made it an issue with his direct-impact seat movements and flatulence. Each of his seats, plus the armrest in between managed to find one of my kneecaps at least once. Unfortunately, my knees were not the part of my body that felt the most violated. The smells were awful, but mercilessly absent for much of the middle part of the flight.

Not that it mattered since I couldn't get to sleep anyway. I watched Black Swan, I watched Conviction. I played Angry Birds. I played Tiny Wings. I played Fruit Ninja. I skimmed Sky magazine. Meanwhile, after dinner was served around 1am Eastern, the entire plane had turned into one big slumber party, expect for me and the flight attendants, who kept walking by and asking if I needed anything, as if the only thing keeping me awake at that moment was my lack of a glass of water. Nothing was working, so I started playing a trivia game on the personal TV screen in front of me. That worked to an extent, as I found myself dozing off between questions. However, even still, I could only stay asleep a little while before something, usually the smelly knee-banger in 16A&B, woke me up abruptly. Then I'd realize how uncomfortable I was an not be able to get back to sleep.

Since we were flying east, the sun came up pretty fast and breakfast was served, which got the interior lights turned on and most people up moving around again. Of course, within about an hour and a half of London, my body decided it was ready for sleep. So while everyone else was waking up, I was crashing. I tried watching the Matt Damon-narrated documentary an the 2008 economic crash whose name escapes me, but that only added to the complete crash out. Once we were on the ground at LHR, I drug myself off the plane, blissfully, if not drowsily, unaware of what lay ahead.