Jack Stine: We all deserve to fly first class

For the first time in my life, I flew First Class. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not bragging about having ‘John Curley’ levels of income. I bought the ticket 4 weeks in advance a few days after the Boeing ‘huge gaping hole in the plane at 10,000 feet’ incident, when no one was flying. Because of this, the price was roughly $200.00. To be totally honest, it was amazing – my flight was delayed by an hour, when I went to the gate to check on the status of the flight, the gate attended offered me a dinner voucher in the airport to ease my dismay and distress.   On the flight, I noticed that the tray table was located in the armrest of the seat and could be deployed by pulling a simple lever. I was offered a beverage in a glass. When I was offered the selection for my in-flight meal, the flight attended said ‘Would you like the protein or the fruit and cheese plate?” I asked which one he liked, and he replied, “I will bring you both,’ which he promptly did and both were amazing. However, in the middle of the intoxicating experience of being treated like royalty – I was hit with a sudden wave of discontent. I can only equate it to the sensation Neo must have had when he was expelled from his goo-pod in the Matrix. A wave of terror and dread hit me at 10,000 feet, and the sound this wave made was, ‘everyone on this plane deserves this…’   Regardless of where you are on the plane. We all deserve more room to stretch out, we all deserve beverages served in a glass, we all deserve both the protein and fruit plate. Why? Because we pay for that service. Flying is an expensive experience no matter where you are in the plane – and being treated like a human being as opposed to Salmon being airdropped into a lake is a privilege, we should all be entitled to, regardless of the cost to the airline.   Sure, maybe some people would say ‘they need to make a profit and they do so by making the seats overpriced and expensive and having plastic cups and mini cokes, and carb sticks instead of fruit.   But wouldn’t more people fly more, and more often, if it was at least a pleasant experience, instead of an exercise in self-administered torture? I think so.