It’s the time of year for saving money!
It’s hardly news that commercial air travel in the United States post 9/11 is nothing short of agony. Check-in and security clearance can be an hour-long process, if not longer. TSA Pre-check helps, and Clear helps even more for a frequent traveler like me, but the process is still pretty brutal. I carry enough airline credit cards, including an AMEX Platinum Card (along with the Priority Pass club card), which helps makes the post-security time not as painful.
That’s not why I try to always fly First Class, though. Other than the fact that coach seats aren’t sized for anyone over five-foot-five and the service reminds me of the time I spent in prison, the real compelling reason to fly up front is that you never know who you might sit next too. Allow me to share some of my stories – both good and bad.
Before the Consumer Electronics Show crapped the bed a few years ago, I was heading back from a trip to the show and I was not feeling well. The number one reason not to attend CES, even before it became a non-audio show, was the fact that 185,000 people packed into Las Vegas like a ten pounds of excrement in a five-pound bag made the costs insane but influenza nearly unavoidable. I was sick as a dog and had a 120 MPH ride to McCarran Airport from the worst Uber driver ever (whom I reported and they fired, I believe).
My flight back to Los Angeles on Virgin America, the best of the best in terms of domestic airlines before being bought up by Alaskan Airlines and quickly ruined, was unexpectedly delayed and delayed again. I was rocking a fever and ultimately found out that I had strep throat. I dealt with both of those problems at the American Express Centurion Lounge (world-class airport lounges in a growing number of U.S. cities that have ready-made food, showers, top-shelf booze, massages, and more) by drinking a few really nice Balvenie 12-year scotches to burn the hate off the back of my throat.
I wished I was back in my “free” suite at The Mirage more than once, but after four hours of waiting, I got to board my flight. To the left of me was Perry Farrell, the lead singer of Jane’s Addiction and the founder of the Lallapaloosa concert festivals, and his wife. To the right of me was his manager. We hit up a conversation and he told me that a major Las Vegas company had brought his entourage out to Sin City to try to learn how to bring a more “experiential” music festival vibe to their casino properties. Starting with events like The Hard Rock Hotel’s “Rehab” summer pool party, Vegas learned quickly that Millennials will spend money in their town but not on beefy steaks, stiff Martinis, and table games. They want experiences that are a whole other thing. They want DJ Easy Dick on the 1’s and 2’s (that’s turntable talk, folks) spinning that uber-annoying bass-laden music at an ear-splitting 120 dB while tweaked out of their minds on Molly.
Their willingness to spend money on events versus tangible assets is a key difference between Millennials and Gen Xers like me and the Baby Boomers that helped make Las Vegas what it is today. For 45 minutes, I got a master class in entertainment. I was able to tell Perry about how I went to the second show of Lallapaloosa at a ski resort in rural Pennsylvania where the second act back in like 1991 was this new band from Seattle who had a really tight playlist. I think they were called Pearl Jam. He laughed. We parted ways and I learned a whole hell of a lot on that flight – far exceeding the $500 that I paid for the round-trip First-Class seat.
Last year, I was in a tricky position as a true travel-bitch. I was invited to go to Sound United’s first-ever dealer event held in New Orleans. I travel a lot, and despite my goal of trying to play the Top 100 gold courses in the United States according to the Golf Magazine 2014-15 list (I am at 71 of the top 100 and 19 of the top 20 as I type), I had never been to New Orleans.
The problem is: how do you tell the really awesome people at Sound United that I can’t fly coach? I apologized about 10 times and insisted on paying the difference between a coach seat and a pretty lousy First Class seat on this Los Angeles-to-Louis Armstrong Delta flight. The guy sitting to my right in the window seat was pretty friendly and we got to chatting. His name is Leroy Bennet (not any relation to Tony, as far as I can tell) and it turns out he is pretty much the greatest concert set designer ever. He was going to New Orleans to meet with Sir Paul McCartney on his then-tour.
Leroy told me that he worked with Prince for a good 14 years and was super-cool about allowing me to ask any and all of my Prince super-fan questions about how he hurt his hip, how Prince got converted from one kooky religion to another, and more. I had my theories before I plunked my fat ass into seat 4E, but now I had first-hand confirmation. After working with Prince, my new buddy worked with post-David Lee Roth Van Halen on tour and, once again, I had a bunch of question that he was more than willing to answer about Sammy, but I was more interested in the role of Alex in the pantheon of Van Halen. Hours into this 3.5-hour flight, Leroy took a nap and I did what any reasonable and curious human being would do: I cyber stalked him on LinkedIn. He has worked with about four generations of the biggest musical artists at every meaningful venue including Super Bowl shows and more. This guy was the real deal. While flying most of the way across the country is normally pretty awful, in this case I learned so much cool rock and roll information that I couldn’t believe it.
Much like you, I have had my travel nightmares that First Class can’t fix. I tried to go see my parents in Philadelphia one Christmas, but thanks to the “shoe bomber” I couldn’t get even close to the front door at LAX and summarily canceled my trip to enjoy the holidays at 70 degrees with my toes in the sand. I once flew back from Phoenix to Los Angeles with a 737 full of Raiders fans so loaded and so out-of-control that the plane was pulled out of approach from the 60-minute flight to land early and have the LAPD pull the people off of the plane and get arrested. But the true low point in First Class was an early flight on a US Airways 767 back to Los Angeles where I was sitting in an aisle seat on the wide-body jet. My seatmate was a much older man who told me that he owned a Harley Davidson dealership in rural Pennsylvania. He seemed fine as he ordered a pre-flight cocktail but then actually and literally shit his pants.
This, my friends, I am not making up. This is not hyperbole. He crapped his BVDs while I am watching my DVDs. You have to be kidding me? I went to the purser on the flight and she said there were no other seats (not even in coach) so she let me hang with them at the front of the plane for hours and hours. They were great.
My last nightmare was from JFK back to Los Angeles when United flew their swanky “premier service” between these two key airports. First Class was full sleeper seats, but in Business Class where my wife and I were sitting, there was epic legroom, DVD players, nice food, and so on. The problem was that I had gotten food poisoning (something that I had never had) from the sushi bar at a well-polished Long Island Jewish wedding event place and when I sat down in my seat, I turned green. There were two kids in front of me who saw the discomfort that I was going through. Pepto Bismol from the airport newsstand wasn’t cutting it. We went wheels-up and I went knees down in a fancy but old 757 bathroom where I barfed my way nearly all the way to California. To make things even worse, I actually knew the purser, “Leslie,” who was adorable yet super-concerned about my issues. She did everything she could to help me not want to open the plane door and jump out.
Despite my tales of woe flying commercial all over this fine nation of ours, the lessons learned and fascinating people that I have met sitting at the front of the bus have been worth it over the years. The value of today’s domestic First Class tickets are nothing short of pathetic. If you can squeeze into Coach, you can put away enough money to get a pretty serious upgrade to your preamp or DAC from Audiogon.com or your local dealer. But then again, what is the value of a good rock and roll story? I’d argue it’s priceless.
How do you fly? What are some of your best domestic flight stories? What are some of your worst? Share with us in the comments below.
Yeah But, what about the headphones?
Buy yourself a Dassault Falcon and you can be Mr rock n roll!
You sound like a true asshole. All of the strep throat, sitting by someone that shat his pants, food poisoning, etc. was well deserved. I think they call that Karma. I hope I never have to sit anywhere near you and probably won’t because coach is fine with me.
Might you be the reason the public forums are a bad idea?
What a effin useless rant! You flew first class first time ! So what… 3 mins of life wasted … you’d have stank up the whole first class I am sure …
Well, Personally, I thought this was a great read. I too used to travel a ton, pre 911, it was golden, easy to do 20 minutes form checkin to boarding in small airports. I worked for an airline and sat up front or cockpit mostly. If the load was light sitting anywhere was fine but on a full plane I hated “sitting on a stool” in the back . Since 911 air travel is lousy. Separating yourself form the crowd is the only way to go, both in airport and on plane. Unlike you I don’t often get interesting seat mates, however some of the best conversations ever have been in the airport bars. Best drunken flight ever was with my boss form one city to another for an important meeting so we didn’t drink but we were surrounded by a completely inebriated group going to an ethnic festival. They stood in the aisle and sang accapella Irish folk songs the whole way. I thought it was great fun my boss not so much.
Nice read! I agree, first makes no sense unless it’s done with OPM, (your employer). I had the luxury of flying on the Concord 4 times, meeting call-backs from London and Paris. An amazing experience, planes like the Concord will happen again but I’d guess to focus on New York to Tokyo et al. Flying in general has lost its glamour, charm and excitement, too bad. But, as you point out, there is always an opportunity to make the acquaintance of new, interesting people. Making the best of it is always a good plan…
Great story. My air flight stories are boring….magazines, etc.
But, in the early/mid 1970’s, I had booked a flight to San Francisco from Los Angeles to visit all my expatriate Stoner friends from the Whittier, Fullerton area, who decided that the wine country, Hippie communes, and an easy life in Santa Rosa was the place to go. It was THE place to go after the wretched death of the 1960’s, and the demise of the Sunset strip in my territory, and the homeless teen refugee camp know as Haight-Ashbury in ‘Frisco.
This was a fast commuter flight at midnight called “The Red Eye” so it was cheap and filled with people who could not afford to fly otherwise. I had just gotten out of Cal state University, and that was all I could afford after tuition, rent, food, and all the vinyl discs, weed, and hairspray I required to make my coif look like Rod Stewart’s wig.
I had an isle seat and to my right, was a guy with a full red/blond beard and ruffled hair. He had the window seat. He introduced himself to me and then told me he had a “fear of flying” disorder and that he might act a little strange during the short flight. The plane took off.
He never said anything to me….he just looked out the window. I lit up a Taryington 100 tobacco cigarette. (you could smoke on planes back then). After some minutes, he started to mumble to himself and twitch like he was having a seizure.
Now this probably sez something about my personality, but I was really enjoying the freak show. So I lit up cigarette after cigarette and just watched. After we touched down, he simply got off the plane fast, not saying a word.
My hippie friend Jim picked me up and drove me up to Healdsburg on the Russian River, and for the next couple of days, I watched the guys in the community start drinking Jack Daniels at noon, and get totally out of it by 2 in the afternoon, while there wives were at work.
Jim, my friend, had a rope for a belt and not a pair of shoes to his name. I brought weed, so I got these guys to stop drinking so early. But it was a sad sight to see two of my southern Cal friends so drunk so early in the day.
Days later, I took a day flight home. Had to take a bus to San Francisco airport from Santa Rosa because my friend Jim had a car that developed electrical issues, (no brake lights), so I was on my own.
Once in the SF airport, I was approached by a black dude with an afro and probably a wool pick, who said he had some great hashish and he would share it with me. All I had to do was go behind an area of the terminal that was being renovated….!!!!Yeah right!!!!….I just thought that me and my green war surplus duffle bag, would be parted by his posse behind all the panels shielding the construction site. I said no, so he went on a short rant about how I must be racist. I walked away with my shouldered duffle bag which I STILL own.
A week or so later, my copy of “Rolling Stone” arrived in the mail and in the advisory pages, the magazine posted a warning about how groups of Blacks were luring long hairs, with the promise of a hash high, only to rob them of their suitcases at the San Francisco airport terminal.
It was an interesting flight and stay in Healdsburg. I made many trips to see my old city friends on the Russian River. Jim NEVER got a job and just lived on his wifes wages while raising two kids. Every time I hear the old throwback song “Cripple Creek” by The Band, I think of Jim…….
“Up on Cripple Creek, she sends me
If I spring a leak, she mends me
I don’t have to speak, she defends me
A drunkards dream if I ever did see one”……(cue mouth harp.)
I agree your air flight stories are boring
I liked them…I suppose your air flight stories involve crashes to make them less boring? 🙂
Flying in any class, I always have my Bowers and Wilkins Px headphones. Not only do they sound great, but allow for adjusting the noise cancelling levels, auto-hibernate when removed, are comfortable to wear, and the battery life has been excellent (one day someone will consider removable batteries like cameras do, so you can swap them out and carry a backup). Favorite story: passenger in a packed 757 who asked (at the top of her lungs) the flight attendant “where is the olive oil? Aren’t sardines always packed in olive oil?” The airline industry is the most disrespectful business on the planet.