KIRO NEWSRADIO OPINION

Jack Stine: We all deserve to be First Class

Feb 28, 2024, 9:33 AM | Updated: 2:34 pm

Flying First Class can be a special experience. (Photo credit should read KARIM SAHIB/AFP via Getty...

Flying First Class can be a special experience. (Photo credit should read KARIM SAHIB/AFP via Getty Images)

(Photo credit should read KARIM SAHIB/AFP via Getty Images)

For the first time in my life, I flew First Class. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not bragging about having John Curley levels of income.

I bought the ticket four weeks in advance, a few days after the Boeing ‘huge gaping hole in the plane at 10,000 feet incident, when no one was flying. Because of this, the price was roughly $200.

To be totally honest, it was amazing. My flight was delayed by an hour. When I went to the gate to check on the status of the flight, the gate attendant offered me a dinner voucher in the airport to ease my dismay and distress.

On the flight, I noticed that the tray table was located in the armrest of the seat and could be deployed by pulling a simple lever. I was offered a beverage in a glass.

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When I was offered the selection for my in-flight meal, the flight attendant said, “Would you like the protein or the fruit and cheese plate?” I asked which one he liked, and he replied, “I will bring you both,” which he promptly did and both were amazing.

However, in the middle of the intoxicating experience of being treated like royalty, I was hit with a sudden wave of discontent. I can only equate it to Neo’s sensation when he was expelled from his goo-pod in The Matrix.

A wave of terror and dread hit me at 10,000 feet, and the sound this wave made was, “everyone on this plane deserves this…”

Regardless of where you are on a plane, we all deserve more room to stretch out. W all deserve beverages served in a glass, and we all deserve both the protein and fruit plate.

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Why? Because we pay for that service. Flying is an expensive experience no matter where you are in the plane – and being treated like a human being as opposed to salmon being airdropped into a lake is a privilege we should all be entitled to, regardless of the cost to the airline.

Sure, maybe some people would say ‘they need to make a profit’ and they do so by making the seats overpriced and expensive and having plastic cups and mini cokes, and carb sticks instead of fruit.

But wouldn’t more people fly more and more often if it was at least a pleasant experience instead of an exercise in self-administered torture? I think so.

Listen to Jack and Spike weekdays from 12 noon to 3 p.m. on KIRO Newsradio.

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Jack Stine: We all deserve to be First Class