On the plane ride from Amman to Chicago, I got to ride business class for the first time. It’s pretty sweet, I guess. The chairs are big, and they recline into a bed if you want them to (and if you push a button first – cheapskate Royal Jordanian doesn’t even have mind-reading chairs). There’s also a lot of free food and drinks, and these cool individual lamps that are bendy and twisty and look like air traffic control microphones (but they’re not – the pilots can’t hear you if you speak into them… or, if they did, they didn’t do what I told them to do. If they had I’d be in Madagascar right now.)Despite the relative coolness of business class, a 14-hour flight is still a 14-hour flight, and a 14-hour flight with three little kids is still a 41-hour flight, business class or no. We took care of Halen by administering him Benadryl by degrees. He succumbed about 5 hours into the flight and dreamed peacefully of mushrooms and the Hurdy Gurdy Man for most of the flight’s balance.
[Here's a picture of Halen at the Salt Lake airport watching airplanes. The fact that he had slept for 4 of the previous 42 hours didn't rain on his parade.]
Savannah and Grace did pretty well too, all in all. Grace wanted to be held a lot, and on an airplane my kids pretty much get whatever they want, as long as they’ll keep quiet. 14 hours is a long time to hold a baby, but it’s kind of like standing in Arctic water: it’s a little uncomfortable for the first 10 or 20 minutes, but after that you can’t really feel it anymore. Savannah watched movies, colored, and wondered when we were going to get there.
All in all, I wouldn’t pay for business class. To justify costing three or four times the price of an economy ticket, it needs to have more flair… more pizzazz. I want a chocolate fountain. Or a guy who comes out and builds houses of cards whenever we hit turbulence. Or a pizzazzy food menu with Otter Pops and tater tots and pancakes in the shape of Lindsay Lohan entering rehab and green eggs and ham.
Still, props to Royal Jordanian for having those cool lamps that look like microphones.