As a rule, I don’t travel business or first class. In the US, airline service has declined to such a point that you hardly get anything in economy class, other than a tiny space to wedge yourself into, which is unpleasant but rarely lasts more than a few hours. By comparison, “World Traveler” class — the basic economy fare on British Airways transatlantic flights — is already a huge class upgrade, with its hot meals, its individual multi-channel television screens, its free drinks, its little kit of toothbrush, eye mask, and socks.

Recently, however, I lucked into an upgrade to “Club World” because my flight was over-booked. This was, to put it simply, awesome. If you’ve ever flown World Traveler class, you may have passed the staggered seats of Club World — some facing forward, some backward, so that neighbors can avoid each other if they like. Here’s the breakdown of how the amenities run, in order of how much they affected my comfort.

  • Coat check. The steward comes and takes your coat for you; it’s returned just before landing, so you don’t have to endure any tedious delay while getting off the plane. This was nice, but not a huge deal.
  • Free games as well as free television. This is a cute idea, having simple video games to play on your little television. Unfortunately, the interface is clunky and I found them too tedious to play.
  • Priority access at security. I don’t hugely mind waiting in security lines unless they’re really, really long; a short line gives me some time to reorganize my stuff in preparation to go through. But I was in a hurry for this flight, so it was lovely to have priority.
  • More spacious seat. An improvement, for obvious reasons, over the narrow compartmentalization in “World Traveler”, though as it happens there is an intermediate “World Traveler Plus” class that has more seat spacing, so if this is the main thing you want, that might be a better investment.
  • Seat that lies flat. This is, I think, pretty self-explanatory: you get a full-tilt seat. Actually, the fact that it lies all the way down is less important to me than the fact that you don’t inconvenience anyone by tilting it; on regular class flights I always feel bad about imposing on the space of the person behind me by leaning the seat back even a little.
  • Better food and wine. When you get on the plane, there’s a free glass of orange juice or champagne; you also receive your menu for the evening’s dinner, and your wine list. The wine list is only a few items long, but the wine itself is markedly superior to what they serve in mini-individual-bottles in World Traveler class. As for dinner, it comes in four courses: an appetizer, a salad, a main dish, and a dessert; the latter followed by coffee and, if you wish, port, and bar of excellent chocolate. What’s more, this is all served on real dishes with real silverware, which I haven’t seen on a flight in years and which I had assumed was simply illegal since 9/11. Also warm bread from a basket. It’s not quite a restaurant experience; not all the food is quite as well-prepared as it aspires to be, and the beef in particular was overcooked. But the whole experience is still way better than the plastic-wrapped stuff you get further back.
  • Molton Brown amenities. In World Traveler class, as I mentioned, you get a little bag with some generic toothpaste and an eyemask and some socks to wear if you want to take off your shoes. In Club World, you get a much nicer eye mask and socks, in a nicer bag, with nicer toothpaste; you also get earplugs and a selection of little tiny travel-sized goodies from Molton Brown, including lip balm, hand lotion, and a soothing balm to be rubbed into your temples. Read a lot of hotel websites — and I do — and you’ll start to develop a weird fetish about the names of the fancy bath products. It’s usually a good indicator of hotel pretensions, if not hotel quality, when they list the brand of their shampoo and soap on the hotel website. (It’s another indicator if they list the brand of their bedlinens; these usually have to be Frette to be worth mentioning at all.) So it’s hard not to read the presence of these little goodies as first and foremost a class indicator. The soothing temple balm didn’t make much difference to me, but the lip balm and lotion are a very nice thing to have on a long, dry-aired flight. Of course, there’s nothing to stop you packing your own except, sigh, current security regulations about liquids and pastes.
  • Your own bottle of water. It used to be that I always brought my own bottled water on a flight; these days, that’s gotten harder, and a long flight where you have to keep asking the stewardesses to bring you something is unpleasant. In Club World you can get steward attention if you want it, but they also just hand everyone their own water bottle.
  • The absence of lots of other people. Being able to get up and walk around without disturbing anyone else too much because we weren’t all crammed in like sardines. Being able to go brush my teeth and wash up in the lavatory as much as I wished, when it was a matter of comfort rather than a matter of desperate need.

Incidentally, if you’re looking for information on business and first class seats on multiple airlines, flatseats appears to have extensive reviews.