Is It Really Worth It To Fly First Class?

The pipsqueak bag of nuts lands on your tray, joined by the complimentary slurp of soda. The reclined seat in front of you begins a rhythmic bounce. The tapping feet behind you are on Round 10 of “My Sharona.”

With a sigh, you lean out into the aisle and gaze longingly through the first-class curtain…. Is that the aroma of freshly cooked garlic up there? Are those real linen napkins? And was that Pauly Shore they just called “sir”?

Since most of us fly in the back of the plane, we can’t help wondering who’s up front, what they’re getting and how much they paid for it.

Is the worst that happens in first-class that you can’t get an offending cheese removed from your plate or hang your robe wherever?

How much more does it cost to be served free highballs by people who have memorized your name?

American Express estimates that 8.8 percent of airline passengers fly first-class. But airlines are not telling how many of these passengers are paying full, first-class fare, which can be 10 times as much as economy fares. Insiders believe first-class passengers rarely are spending their own money.

“Unless you’re wealthy or your company’s paying for it or the ‘Today’ show is flying you out or you just don’t care about money, first-class is not worth the cost,” says Marty Salfen, senior vice president of the International Airline Passengers Association, which has 400,000 members in 150 countries.

While some see this democracy in the skies as a good thing, others wish a little more class awareness could be restored in the skies.

“Few in the American airline business even begin to understand what real service, let alone first-class, means…. And then they introduced ‘rewards’ programs, which forever changed the quality of the first-class experience,” Ted Carter, editor in chief of biztravel.com, wrote in an opinion piece for the Web site.

The British get high marks for their first-class service, particularly on international flights. For instance, with Virgin Atlantic, the trans-Atlantic first-class experience starts at your front door if you are traveling from Heathrow in London. A limo will fetch you and deliver you to the airport. Later this year, all flights out of Los Angeles and San Francisco will offer complimentary in-flight beauty treatments.

Traveling abroad on British Airways’ Boeing 747 is widely viewed as the ritziest of international airline travel - outside of flying the Concorde or your own plane.

Say you are going to London. Prepare to spend a lot more than your coach ticket of about $1,100. First-class runs $10,000.

Once aboard, expect a good 6 feet of leg room - fairly standard in first-class, travel industry sources say. That’s compared with coach, where you typically won’t find more than about 35 inches between your seat and the next row.

Stretch out flat, if you like, in the “seat” created by yacht designers. You are in your own mini-cabin now, with partial privacy screening in pear wood finish and your own retractable entertainment center, a guest seat for visitors.

When you are ready for a snooze, your own electronically adjustable seat folds out into a 6-foot-6-inch bed where you can wear complimentary pajamas and tuck under a duvet or “tartan blanket.”

A nonstop parade of food and spirits is offered throughout your flight. Cocktails and canapes arrive first, followed by this typical menu: selection of smoked salmon, grilled Mediterranean vegetables with fresh herbs, salad and a choice of entrees.

With this kind of treatment, do many people actually complain? You bet. Airlines and their passengers stress that the cabin of any airplane is primarily brawl-free, with tolerant and well-behaved travelers - and attendants.

But first-class passengers have high expectations. Hawaiian Airlines flight attendant Kaimi Lee, a 13-year veteran based in Los Angeles, recalls a passenger who requested something that was not on the menu: fresh lobster, which the traveler assumed would be kept live in a tank on board, just in case someone such as himself desired it at 36,000 feet.

And a woman passenger once dropped her keys down the first-class lavatory. When Lee said how sorry he was to hear that, she looked at him pointedly and said: “Aaaaand?”

Lee laughed at the memory. “She wanted me to get them. I said, ‘I don’t go there.’ Sometimes ‘No’ is the proper response.”