How to Survive Flying First Class...

Sitting in my wide, cushy seat here in First Class on an American Airlines flight from Boston to Los Angeles, I am suddenly aware that I have made a massive mistake. I have already been served juice in a fluted glass and coffee and am looking forward to my cheese omelet with tomato and asparagus, basal and garlic chicken sausage, and freshly baked breads with a nice mimosa. There is a promise of cookies baked on flight to come.

What am I doing here? These seats are so wide and comfortable. The blanket is heavy and the pillow is full sized. I should not be here. I should be back in coach crammed into a seat that the child behind me kicks while crying. He should be coughing in my hair. I should be craning my neck as the food trolley approaches trying to determine whether the pasta is less offensive than the chicken, and if either of them have a side dish that might be digestible. I should leave this place immediately. Maybe I can go back and see if some poor sap in Coach will switch seats with me. But, alas, I know it's too late. The damage is done.

This flight is a splurge. We are definitely not First Class kind of people. We do all right, but have you seen the mark up on these tickets? We booked this flight months ago, thinking we were in plenty of time to use out hard earned miles to get a flight out to the folks' house for the Thanksgiving holiday. Alas, all the "regular" miles seats had long been taken and we were left with three choices: pay for seats, book using "any time" miles at double the number, or book First Class, which came in at five thousand miles less per ticket. So, we closed our eyes and took the plunge.

Oh, look, here comes the nice flight attendant with my sparkling Champaign and orange juice. She looks innocent enough. I wonder if she knows that she is an instrument of evil.

I will never be here again. This flight, as will be our return trip, was a bloop, a gaff, a blunder. After this one trip on the winged, catered, barkalounger of joy, it is back to Coach Class for us. Forever. Back to the lines six deep for the lavatories and the awkward squeezing past the folks as they come out. Back to standing behind the drink cart for twenty minutes as I attempt to return to my seat. Back to the tray tables that don't clear my knees, and the guy next to me who keeps hogging the arm rest. And all the while, I will mourn what I have lost. For one fleeting trip, I found air travel nirvana. Paradise in the sky. Jealously I will sit, simpering as the smell of fresh baking cookies wafts back to my seat over the view obscuring wing, and I will ask not for whom the cookies bake. They do not bake for me.

So, having been to the promised land, how is one to return to Coach Class and still live a full and productive life? I do have some tips. Believe me, I've been pondering, knowing that this is the fate that awaits me. Here is what I have come up with.

First, bring slippers, a nice slipper sock with a protected bottom (you know how those lavatories can be) will unbind your feet, which will allow your entire body to relax just a little bit more. Your feet, like the rest of you, are going to swell during flight. Undo those loafers. Most of our sense of comfort comes from what out feet and heads experience. The rest of the body follows suite.

Second, start out with a nice anti-inflammatory before the flight. Advil should do the trick. If you can loosen up those muscles just a little bit, the cramped seats and lack of leg room won't hurt quite so much. It can also lessen the effects of the edema most of us experience when we hit 30,000 feet.

Third, bring your own food aboard. Pack yourself a nice picnic of something that you specially enjoy and that keeps well for a few hours. If first class is serving fillet mignon or risotto with a buttery shrimp sauce, but you've got your chicken parmesan and rice pilaf with a chopped salad tossed in a balsamic vinaigrette, I'd say you win.

I have just been presented with a nice dish of warmed mixed nuts. If the future, I will be bringing on board a package of cashews (my favorite), and not wait greedily for my foil pack of salted peanuts. Hmmmmm… warmed mixed nuts. Food for thought.

Fourth, in flight entertainment can be yours for the choosing. Don't count on the romantic comedy with all the references to air travel edited out and playing on those neck craning screens above your heads to help you to pass the time. You can pick up a portable DVD player at most drugstores for about $100.00 these days. You can set it at a comfortable angle, put in whatever DVD you'd like to watch, and the hours will fly by. Note: be sure to purchase a power adapter at any electronics store. Your local Wal-Mart carries them as well. The AC plugs on airplanes are much like cigarette lighters in your car. For $25.00 you can purchase an adapter that plugs into the airplane's power source, with a three pronged outlet on the other end. Entertainment the whole flight through!

Ditto for a walkman or MP3 player. Important: Don't forget to plug the headphones provided by the airlines or your own headphones (recommended) into your player. Whether you're watching a DVD or listening to your MP3 player, being a bad neighbor will evoke the animosity of fellow travelers and flight staff alike, and you will likely be instructed to turn your player off all together.

Fifth, bring your own headsets, or if you purchase yours on the flight, be sure to keep it in the future. Most airlines are now "selling" their headsets. Your headsets are more likely to be more comfortable. Now, most airlines have the single headset jacks, but some do get a little tricky and offer headset jacks that require two pronged jacks. If so, you may need to buy one set, and then stash them in a drawer at home for your next flight. It just feels better if you don't have to hand the flight attendant two to five dollars for a headset to watch a movie or listen to in flight radio that you wouldn't even be interested in piping into your apartment elevator if you weren't so desperate to be entertained.

Sixth, and possibly most importantly (depending on your perspective), bring your self some nice, homemade (if possible) cookies. Chocolate chip are good, but anything you like is okay. When those cookies get baking in first class, and you are sure to be drooling as your "pasta or chicken" choice is sitting in front of you, untouched, pulling out a zip lock bag of homemade chocolate cookies can pretty much take care of the cravings those evil baking of the cookies aromas can stir up in the dregs (that's us) in Coach Class.

Sixth, BE NICE. This should actually be first, but I think you can follow along. Be nice to the attendant at the gate. It is the people who did not shout at her that are going to end up being the one that she blocks the seat next to if the flight is not full, I assure you- they have some discretion in the blocking of these seats, and they will use it to reward the people who make their lives the least miserable. It's hard to blame them- air travel people are cranky!

As we are addressing being nice, also be nice, and not too demanding, to your flight attendant. The number of times you will be checked on, and the amount of clout you will have, meaning the results you will get when you cruise back to the rear galley and request another drink or an extra packet of peanuts, will vary depending on your behavior. This is a rule I cannot disagree with. For those of us who have been waitresses, bartenders, taxi drivers, or the like, the treatment the customer presents to the server results in responses directly proportionate to the amenities offered. The balance is in tact. Choose the side of the scale you will settle into.

Ah, look… the hot towels are here.