Flying Second Class?

The first time I flew, I was 11 years old. My Dad was going to Chicago for a Postal Workers Conference and my Mom sent me as a chaperon. I remember the flight well. We drove to the airport, got our ticket and walked onto the plane, a process that took all of 10 minutes from the curbside to our seats. The seats were spacious and comfortable, the stewardesses (anyone remember stewardesses?) were pretty and polite and they brought us food and beverages with a huge smile. There were a few rows of seats along each side of the plane. They were brightly colored, all the same size and we had fluffy pillows, warm blankets, newspapers room to sprawl out and enjoy the ride. We were all the same, nothing separated us. Nothing distinguished any one of us from the other. As a matter of fact, we all had a common bond. We were knit together by our common experience. We were just a little community of brothers and sisters, each of us drinking our fill from the deep well of optimism that came along with living in the early 60's. We just happened to be doing it at 400 mph and 30,000 feet.

Things have changed since 1963.

Now, when you buy your ticket, you have to decide whether you want to fly 'coach' or 'first class'. Well, we all want to fly 'first class' but, short of liquidating some of our real estate holdings in downtown Los Angeles, most of us are unable to foot the bill for a first class ticket which costs about three times more than my first car cost me. You can fly first class to Denver…or you can buy a single family home in Youngstown, Ohio. The home would be a good investment, but not as comfortable nor as elevating to your self-esteem.

You begin to realize this immediately before you board the plane. "Welcome to United Flight 857 to Baltimore, we will be boarding our highly distinguished and socially privileged first class passengers first…before the rest of you can get on." You hear the ticket agent saying things like, "Well, Mr. Jones! So nice to have you with us again. We'll have your champagne and caviar ready for you once you're comfortable and all of your immediate needs are adequately met." You watch as they amble slowly onto the plane, taking their time because…well because they can…all 10 of them.

Then comes our turn, "Now we'll board our remaining 730 passengers." The stampede begins. Everyone queus up in a line that stretches down the hallway past the rest rooms which you don't have time to use because the first class passengers took a nap on the way down the walkway and now there's no time left before the plane leaves.

Now the first in a long line of embarrassing situations occurs when you find that you have confused your rental car slip for your boarding pass. You hear the ticket agent saying, "Look 24F, if you can't find it, you're going to have to step out of line even though you have photo ID that you've shown to 100 Security personnel in order to get to this gate and I can see your name right here in my flight manifest. Let's move along, we don't have much time!"

Now, after suffering the humiliation of wrestling with your carry on down the walkway only to have them take it from you at the door because all the first class passengers have used up all the overhead bins to store their stock, bonds, fur coats and small islands in the Caribbean…you have to walk past those same first class passengers to get to your seat. You squeeze past their sectional sofa, reclining, massage chairs covered with lambskin leather and work your way toward the "coach cabin" with 'them' refusing to make eye contact with you lest they catch some mysterious disease rendering them unable to enjoy the finer things in life.

Then you enter coach.

Now, the fisrt class section is about ¼ of the plane and has, maybe, 12 seats in it. The coach class has the remaining ¾ of the plane and has over 700 seats in it. They do this by determining the average size for human beings living in your country and then making the seats 6 inches narrower. They then conduct extensive research to find out what size your feet so they can place the rows of seats approximately 1 inch closer together than the length of you shoe, forcing you to sit at with your feet splayed out in front of you or resting on the heels of the nice lady occupying the seat in front of yours.

Once you contort yourself into your assigned seat, approximately 0 inches from the person sitting next to you who, hopefully, has showered sometime in the last 72 hours (you will find out before you leave the plane!). The humiliation continues when you discover that you have just sat on your seatbelt and have absolutely no hope of retrieving it without doing serious damage to one or two major body parts and maybe to a few of the body parts of your new soul mate in 24E.

Eventually you get settled, they close the door to the plane and while you are gazing longingly onto the first class cabin, hoping that perhaps a morsel of pâté might roll down the aisle to your seat….they close the drape. Ah…yes….the drape. Not really a drape at all but a heavily armored shield making sure that no one from coach drools into the first class section and on to first class clothing as the flight attendants wave pond fronds over the elite while they soak in individual hot tubs and dine on expertly prepared Duck L'Orange, cooked right at their table which is festooned with solid gold eating utensils that they can take home with them along with cashmere robes and Bruno Magli slippers. "Oh, flight person! This grape has not yet been peeled! What has ever happened to air travel these days?"

Meanwhile, back in steerage, "Would you like some complimentary pretzels? Here is an incredibly small package that is impossible to get open and has 3 small pretzels in it. Water? That will be $4 and I want exact change. I don't want to have to expend any effort. I'm saving my energy in case a first class passenger needs me to shine his shoes while he's getting his pedicure up on the sundeck. We'll be showing a movie you will not like on the world's smallest screen which will be obscured by the nice lady in front of you who has decided to leave her hat on while she reclines her seat fully, cutting off the circulation to the lower extremities of your body. Paramedics will be available at the service counter when we land. You can crawl there but please don't get in the way of the first class passengers as we ferry them through the airport in air conditioned golf carts with flashing lights on them. Please enjoy your flight and if you don't, you'll probably come back anyway...."

One of these days, I'm going to sell my kids into slavery and buy a first class ticket.

Disclaimer: I may have exaggerated just a tad on some of the above details.