Shades of the Titanic era. No, not a sinking or a catastrophe. In this instance I am reminded of the class divisions. We boarded our Virgin Atlantic Airbus 340 holding tickets with seat assignments 65D and 65E. It is a long hike down that plane to row 65. We figured we would be in the back of the plane . . . and we were. Last row, backs to the wall. Any farther and we would have been dangling from the rudder. When we first entered the plane we marveled at the leather couches with automans that made comfy beds for the overnight flight in first class. As we moved further down we admired the leather chairs with ample leg room and near horizontal reclining in business class. The leather changed to cloth in standard fare, but the seat spacing still gave plenty of room to stretch out. As we entered rows 55-65 we marvelled how the floor was no longer visible between the seats. "Fit like spoons" took on new meaning. It became apparent that Virgin Atlantic assigned so many square feet of floor space per dollar. Let's do a little math, shall we? A first class ticket runs $3000, fetching an area large enough for a grown man to lie down, say 12 square feet. This computes out to roughly $250 per square foot. We paid $600 for our tickets, giving us a floor allowance of roughly 2.5 square feet, about the room required to accomodate a man standing up. This explains why my knees were millimeters from the bum of the man in front of me (although I must confess, it might have been a woman. He/she was so close even with my reading glasses on I could not focus enough to distinguish) and my lower legs extended far beneath. I took a photo of the person next to me in steerage with my iPhone. It is attached. All I could get was an eye. We were really packed in.
When we reached Heathrow in London they extracted us from our seats with the Jaws-of-Life. We limbered up, then hobbled into the terminal.
However, don't think us ungrateful. We are so pleased to have gotten on the flight. Responsibly, we made our reservations in January, using Orbitz to secure passage on Air India from Newark to London. In late February Orbitz sent an email saying Air India was no longer going to fly to London, but never fear, they had our backs and would rebook with another airline. Could I call Orbit at 5am when Air India, in India was still open? 3 weeks and many early morning phone calls later we were confirmed on Virgin Atlantic. We printed our confirmation. Superorganized Sally filed it away and as late winter blossemed into spring we built our itenarary around this all important Atlantic crossing flight.
Tuesday, two days ago, as I was about to load our packs into the car for the drive to Portland to begin our journeys we got a reminder from Orbitz about our Heathrow to Paris flight, but not a word about Newark to London. Concerned, I called Orbitz, read the locater number from the dutifully filed confirmation page and inquired about our transoceanic flight. "Yes, here it is," said the bright young person at Orbitz, "that flight was cancelled. You have no flight tomorrow." 7 hrs of phone calls, 5 of which were spent on hold listening to the same tinny version is some classical piece of music, and two "I need to talk to your supervisor"s later and we were assured passage on Virgin Atlantic. So imagine our lack of surprise when we arrived at the Virgin Atlantic desk in Newark to find they had our names in their system, but no tickets. We dug in our heels, chained ourselves to their registration counter and did what any good American would do when confronted by oppressive British (in this case company) rule-we flashed our printed confirmation paper from February. 30 minutes later they miraculously found two seats on the "full flight" and we were off.
I suspect they installed those seats as we cued up, hence the lovely conditions of our passge as described above.
So here we are in Paris-jet lagged but happy. We dined on traditional French food last night and then collapsed into bed. I am awake now The local clock says 2:30am, but Mr.Chuck's clock says 9:30pm.
Looking forward to connecting up with Cindy around noon today.
If you made it reading this far, you deserve a medal. I will contact my embassy and arrange one to be shipped.
All our best!
We will keep you posted.
Chuck and Sally
Chuck
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