It’s fantastic!
Let me explain… the last time I came to the UK on business, I watched as the people in the front of the plane reclined their seats in to beds (yes beds) while I tried to find a way to get comfortable. I was on a Virgin Atlantic flight, and while they make everything look cool, the lucky few in the very front of the plane looked really cool… so we decided to check it out for this trip.
We ended up biting the bullet and paying the extra to try it out. American Express made it a bit easier to swallow by giving us a “2 for 1″ on the airfare if we booked all of it through them and used the same airline to get to and from the US to the UK/Europe. We ended up doing that and flying Delta. I’m super glad we did the upgrade. We ended up taking a red-eye over to the UK, and obviously wanted to be able to sleep a bit so that we would have plenty of energy when we got to London.
The pros / cons:
PRO – your seat reclines completely flat in to a “bed”. Granted… it doesn’t have your “sleep number”, but it was certainly more comfortable than a normal seat.
CON – Over the top expensive! Definitely not worth it for every trip, but we splurged on this one since it’s the first trip we have taken together in over 5 years, and it’s Whitney’s first trek overseas.
PRO – In addition to the cool seat, we got 2 full meals, free booz, a pillow, blanket, travel kit with toothpaste, toothbrush and that sort of stuff, and then we also got a little voucher to use an express lane at customs. That was super cool as well. We made it through in like 2 minutes. There was a pretty good line built-up for the normal lines.
CON – Whitney is spoiled now and won’t want to fly economy class anymore. Too bad. ;)
Bottom line is that for a premium you can get some really nice amenities. Not sure that it was totally worth the extra spend, but it sure did make for a nice trip across the pond.
http://www.delta.com/traveling_checkin/inflight_services/business_elite/flat_beds.jsp
