Its all very well to jet set and travel around the world, a different continent every few months and until they develop teleporting, many hours sitting crammed into flying cattle trucks! There are perhaps 50 odd people each flight who have the pleasure of flying business class, for the other 500 odd people on the flight breathing space is not an option! On a recent flight from durban, south africa to dubai (en route to switzerland) there was not a single empty seat in the whole of economy class. If you have ever spent 8 hours on a fully booked plane you will empathise with me. Now add to this 4 hours of continued turbulence and you begin to get a picture of the flight!
I have spent many hours on many planes and have still not come up with a way of making economy class over long distance bearable, but there are ways of making it tolerable. Firstly, choose a seat near the back, the back of the plane its always emptier than the front so the chances of getting a free seat next to you are much higher. If you're on a full plane though it doesn't matter much.
The next bit of advice, be friendly! The air stewards can make or break your flight! They have a lot of people to keep happy, in cramped conditions for many hours and a little bit of compassion and friendliness goes a long way to making sure they go out of their way to make sure your flight is pleasant.
I experienced this to the extreme on my horrid flight across africa. A little bit of joking and chatting to the air steward lead him to bringing me an extra business class dessert with a glass of champagne! I can assure you that business class have delicious dessert and a little bit of chocolate and champagne go a long way towards making an economy class flight not only tolerable but a little exciting too!!
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