Flight upgrades? Be careful what you wish for

What was a first class flight like? So wonderful it’s too painful to recall.

Like many men of his generation, my father never felt properly dressed without a necktie: at work, out for dinner, walking the dog, even gardening at home on a weekend.

There’s a photo of him the day after my mother died, sitting bereft in an armchair, sporting a neatly Windsor-knotted tie on the one occasion anybody would have forgiven him a lapse in standards.

But no, appearances had to be upheld, even to his own dying day. (At least that’s what I like to imagine, for he died six weeks after being taken into Covid quarantine without any of the family ever seeing him again; but that’s a different and much angrier story, and not for this happy corner of the paper.)

Neither of his sons inherited his sartorial fastidiousness, although I still feel a stab of guilt if I wear a suit with an open-neck shirt. But I was always intrigued by his conviction that arriving smartly dressed to an economy check-in counter increases the likelihood that you will be bumped up to business class.

Fortunately my job has involved a lot of air travel over the years, affording me many opportunities to test his theory, and I believe he was correct. The only flaw in his strategy is that while elegance improves your chances a hundredfold, they leap from roughly one in a million to one in ten thousand, so still a fair few holidays before you hit the jackpot.

Nevertheless, it once happened to me, I swear, during my decade as the South Pacific editor for an outrageously wealthy American publication. Multiple trips each year between Sydney and New York, London or Hong Kong; and always obliged – yes, obliged! – to fly business class, attaining the highest frequent-flyer status imaginable – cobalt or lithium, or some other rare metal the Chinese would jam into a stupid electric “car”.

Fortunately my job has involved a lot of air travel over the years.

For these were the golden years of the journalism caper, before websites came along and panicked large chunks of the print media into giving away their content for free, surfing the new wave of technology into the jagged reef of lost profits and savage cost-cutting.

Anyway, there I was one Tuesday morning relaxing at the gate at JFK (flying was more agreeable before 9/11) when a charming member of the Qantas cabin crew approached, took my boarding pass and tore it in half.

Uh-oh, I thought, the feds know what I was up to last night – but instead of calling security she beamed and handed me a ticket marked 1A, a seat so far to the front of the 747 that I believe the pilot was sitting behind me.

What was first class like? I remember I’d cruised through half a bottle of Krug and a family-size tray of canapes before most passengers had boarded, but it’s too painful to recall the glorious details of the only flight I never wanted to end, because it ruined business and every other class of travel for me. Forever.

Over the next three dozen long-haul business flights, I prayed it might happen again, staring silently at the ground staff, head tilted, making them uncomfortable with my creepy attempt at appealing puppy-dog eyes, but no, never. Only a worn set of grey pyjamas with a kangaroo logo to reassure me the first time wasn’t just a dream.

These days, in my reduced circumstances (that’s right, spending my own money), I travel in economy. Maybe I could afford the occasional overseas business-class trip, but I reason that it makes more sense to buy a small car with the savings when I get home.

But if I knew the airline’s CEO, and could perhaps do them a little favour in return, would I call and ask, oh pretty please, for another of those lovely upgrades? Not on your bloody life.

I might be a worthless journalist, ranking somewhere on the social ladder between a used-car salesman and a Marseilles pimp, but even the lowest of us can try to maintain a modicum of dignity and self-respect.