My bona fides first. For the record I’ve turned both left and right when getting on planes.
For almost 25 years it was mostly left into Business, away from the cattle truck conditions which I now understood are known colloquially as ‘goat class’.
As regular readers will know I’ve experienced the delight of the aeroplane bed, the cosy slippers, the space to spread out, the in-flight bar, the manicure, underdone roast beef on Delft porcelain, the Veuve Cliquot and the fluttering attentions of those delightful ladies and gents who minister to the lucky beggars up in First and Business Class.
More recently as I’ve abjectly confessed, I mostly turn right, since it’s my own credit card being whacked down for that ticket not the multi-national company for whom I worked.
(Apropos. I calculated recently that for the price of a Business Class return to Hong Kong – which for an insane second I was seriously contemplating purchasing – I could take my two loved ones on a Spring sunshine holiday including food and drink. And yes, too right. I bought a cut-price Economy ticket, slummed it, and will soon be soaking up some desert sun.)
OK, so I’ve been forced to join the hoi-polloi and as I sit cramped, hungry, and irritable, waiting for the eventual arrival of the food trolley as it makes its way down the aisle with all the speed of a differently-abled snail on Valium, I confess I curse inwardly.
But there is one thing you will never, ever, ever catch me doing, and that is trying to blag an upgrade.
I’ve been given one or two over the years, but I refuse to ask. It’s degrading, especially as you can see the face of the check-in person puckering up in disgusted anticipation as they wait for you to ask.
I’ve seen grown men and women degrade themselves, beg, lie, wheedle and even threaten, to get up to the front of the aircraft in the big seats. And whatever reason they give, the check-in person has heard it all before; bad leg, bad back, claustrophobia (That’s a good one; if you’re claustrophobic how the hell can you fly at all?)
It’s sickening to behold, and no-one would dream of doing it at Kings Cross. “Oh go on, please Mr Ticket Collector, let me go into First Class, my leg hurts.”
So why at the check-in counter of Virgin or British Airways or Cathay Pacific? My view is, “Look mate you shelled out £490 for a return to Hong Kong. Why on Earth should you be sitting next to someone who’s paid four grand?”
It used to infuriate me in the days when I did go Business – and sometimes First – when we’d be ready to push back, I’d be stretched out, another big empty seat next to me, and the flight attendant would push up some scruffy git, or worse, scruffy fat git who’d obviously been upgraded at the last minute for a reason like the hardy annual of his seat not reclining or his in-chair video being broken.
And yet worse still, when instead of keeping shtum about it, he’d insist on boasting of his chicanery, “I conned ‘em rigid. Brilliant innit?”
No it isn’t mate. I was entitled to be up there and you were not. So when I went out on my own I made a vow. If I had an Economy ticket I’d never try to get upgraded. If I was, well, the Gods would be smiling and I would not let on that I had been given preferential treatment.
The irony is that sometimes by not trying to get upgraded – they upgrade you.
I once had to fly back economy from Dakar, Senegal, Air France with a colleague. At the check-in the local man was a trainee having great difficulty under the gaze of his French supervisor. My colleague and I were patient (even though at one point we had to take our tickets across to a different counter to be amended). We also spoke French as best we could, and did our best to help out the sweating trainee.
As the tortuous 20-minute long procedure came to an end we saw the supervisor whisper to the trainee. As he handed us the tickets we saw that they were Premiere Classe all the way back to Paris via Bordeaux. Our patience and lack of irritation or bad temper had been noticed – and rewarded. Vive la France!
But I still won’t beg!
