Business class is not a luxury
I am clearly a Millennial Digital-Nomad; why am I flying in Business like I’m some sort of 1960s New York Mad Man?
In August 2024 I flew a small plane to Johannesburg, from some giraffes. It was an Airlink Embraer 190 and I sat in Seat 2A. This was a Business class seat; ooh, fancy, you might think! While this was in the midst of my Round-the-World Business class tour that I got for the price of Economy (more on this absurdity in another article) the flight had nothing to do with that itinerary. It was a separate cash ticket and I bought Economy. WHAT’S MY UPGRADE SECRET?! Did I dress like Tom Ford at check-in? Did I give sexual favours to the Airlink staff? Did I agree to take the airline CEO for “walkies” late at night, with him disguised in kinky latex pup outfit, crawling around on all fours with a phallic dog biscuit in his mouth? No. It was a last-minute aircraft swap and I’d already chosen Seat 2A on the former plane, which did not have any Business seats at the front. So my selection was transferred identically to the new plane, where no seats were sold as “Business” and therefore my “upgrade” was free, coincidental, and the result of nothing more than my ninja-ability to acquire the best seat I can get on the plane, regardless of cabin.
So what kind of surprise luxury did I enjoy? How divinely was my derrière cushioned? Did it have a massage function? Again, no; it was a 15 year-old, basic regional plane, and the “Business” seat was simply a little bit wider then the ones behind. I was pleased I wasn’t flying in Europe where you don’t even get that. I also had no one sitting next to me as the left “A” side had only one seat per row, such was the small size of the plane. Otherwise, it was a couple of hours of my life sitting in a simple, yet reasonably comfortable seat with adequate legroom. Then the moment passed as we landed and I carried on with the ordeal of my ordinary mortality. I don’t want to be ungrateful or lapsing in mindfulness—I appreciated and paid attention to the detail of this brief moment—but I would not have paid extra for the seat on such a short flight.
Now imagine I am Mr Business, with my tailored suit, Fauré Le Page travel bag and engorged sense of entitlement. Let’s say I commute to the savannah every week to discuss SWAT analysis with the giraffes. And to make it more eventful, let’s pretend my tolerance for self-indulgence is not something I consider to be “tolerance”. The aviation infrastructure is lapping at my feet for this nonsense. You know what I mean; I have money (even better, that of my boss), so the airline likes me. I travel often, and prioritise service over price, so the airline likes me. I acquire Status with the airline and become loyal for the reward of more perks, so the airline likes me. I may as well give the airline my bank log-in details so they can help themselves to my coin whenever they like. Business perks include priority check-in, away from the “common people”, lounge access, away from the common people, a slightly more private seat, away from the common people, you get the idea. Of course I want the slight improvement in seating; I must feel like I’m really something elevated when I have a throne ahead of the Economy people behind. The world doesn’t revolve around them, it revolves around ME! And my atrocious conduct, both in the boardroom and the bedroom, now seems justified; people should thank me just for looking at them, my attention is that precious. From the point of view of the airline, the enormous price my own boss is paying for all this pretty much pays for the entire flight operation, and the CEO becomes so fat from his excess foie gras consumption that all this has funded, that HE ends up being on the menu in the Business lounge next time.
Back to reality. I have never in my life flown to a Business Meeting. I may be a frequent flyer these days, but it has nothing to do with business. I’m an arty freelancer who has nowhere near the kind of income I could’ve had if I were more of a LinkedIn kind of person. I don’t know if you’ve watched Mad Men, but it’s set in the 1960s. Business class for actual business is possibly a last-century relic by now. CEOs have no incentive to pay their minions to do it, when an immersive, 24K 8D VR-whatever video call even lets them haptically feel each other’s energy without leaving their fetid beds. And this is just the transition before they get fired and replaced with AI anyway. Or whatever… I don’t have a crystal ball. Meanwhile, with the increasing number of social media influencers in desperate need to have evidence that they too dipped their tits in the Dubai infinity pools and bounced their balls on Bali beaches, all while projecting a lifestyle devoid of suffering, I wouldn’t be surprised if there were an imminent tipping-point, beyond which the majority of “Business” flyers are actually people illiterate to a balance sheet. My point is, in certain travel markets at least, the whole idea of Business class for business is often… grab your LONG–HALL bingo card… ABSURD!
I talk about why and how I got into flying Business for the price of Economy, mainly as a consequence of what I irresponsibly call Post-Traumatic Scoot Disorder (see my ‘About’ page), and also the biological fact of my long limbs, that don’t always fit in Economy seats anyway. But I called this LONG–HALL not just for the love of puns, it is about long-haul travel, and not two-hours-forty on American Airlines from Chicago to Newark. The Venn diagram overlap with my life and short-haul Business class is something I’ve only very recently noticed, and it mostly occurs when I’m travelling with luggage and have spare points. But I thought I’d give you this example nevertheless, because for some people unlike my caricature of Mr Business, Business class seems so antithetical that they don’t even see its existence, and this attitude can be ridiculous.
Why?
I recently flew British Airways from Heathrow to Zurich, in conditions barely discernible from an EasyJet flight, and I paid for Business class with Avios because it cost me £20 more than a cash fare in Economy with checked-in luggage. Since Pret à Manger seems to charge around £200 for a baguette these days, I realised the BA food and drink in the lounge and on-board were worth the extra £20, besides the inclusion of luggage and less time queuing. Had I paid the extortionate cash price for this two-hour Business flight in a seat identical to Economy, I would’ve been forced to jump out the Emergency Exit mid-flight to save myself from the resulting bankruptcy bureaucracy. Also, as a major bonus, it turned out my friend was flying BA from Heathrow on the same day, and he is the kind of fetishist who frequently upgrades his 5-minute flight to Belfast in order to fill his mouth with a juicy sausage in the Heathrow lounge. We went there together and the whole thing was very amusing.
When it comes to long-haul travel, however; the way I see it, as someone who has neither a suit nor a million followers, is that Business class is not and should not be a luxury. Long-haul Economy is a borderline violation of civility! I’ve done it in an Emirates A380, which was spacious and had good food and service, and much more legroom than Scoot. They even gave me water… But despite the adequate food, drinks and entertainment, it was expensive and tedious and took forever, and sleeping overnight in an Economy seat is not really sleeping. Long-haul Business for me, you, and increasingly most people these days, has nothing to do with business. We’ll see how airlines adapt to this change. My guess is it will be glacially slow for anything physical, like seats, but lightning-fast for any opportunity they have to raise prices based on demand. If you want to see the world without hating the journey, and supersonic jets are not an option right now, then flying Business is your best option. What you need, therefore, if you’re not familiar with using points for long-haul travel, is to follow my advice in the GIVE ME POINTS section, and thank me later! Otherwise you’ll be faced with the choice of being packed in like a factory chicken, or paying so much for a cash fare that you’ll have to murder the CEO upon your return, just to get a bit of Luigi Mangione-style empathy and possibly to have a bed in prison when your house is repossessed. This is now the second CEO death fantasy in one article, I never knew I was so intertwined with the Jungian collective unconscious.
On short-haul Business, I like it when it’s barely, if any, increased cost or effort over Economy. But I’m not everyone, and it seems there are plenty of non-businesspeople and non-me travellers who consider it worthwhile to jump through the hoops of points and status and upgrades and everything, or just gratuitously cough up more cash to airlines, in order to spend a minimal number of minutes in slightly better conditions than everyone behind them, even without luggage requirements. As long as I can just about fit my vast protrusions of limbs into the seat, and especially if it’s a plane with only two seats next to the window, I’ll probably veer towards the cheaper ticket for the relative blip in my life in which a 2-hour flight exists. But you do you—especially if you’re a giraffe.
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