Among the Clouds

Recently  I had the chance to fly in executive class for the very first time. Best of all, I didn't even have to pay for it: there were vacant seats in 1st class and, for some reason, TAP (a Portuguese flight operator) kindly upgraded me.

At first I thought I would regret accepting the offer, since it meant travelling alone (I had two friends in regular seats) and my seat, while having a lot of space, did not have a table. Things started to look brighter when the happy-to-help (or at least looking like it) flight attendant explained me how to unfold the table hidden in my armchair. But the good stuff was yet to come. I was asked to pick some readings from a considerable stock of newspapers and magazines (I was almost ashamed to choose a sports newspaper) and soon after whether I'd like an apperitive. Martini seemed fine. Then came the menu, along with the wine list. Since I don't really appreciate octopus, the choice was obvious: white fish mousse as appetizer, roast veal with gnocchi for the main course and, wrapping-up the meal, lemon pudding. As it should always be, coffee came next. When asked for my (red) wine preference, I (cleverly I'd say) escaped the embarassment of answering "I don't have any" by stating my confidence in the house's choice. The whole meal was utterly delicious, and having proper napkins and silverware (the knife was not sharp, but proved itself quite a match for the extremely tender meat) also helps. The trailers are collected individually, so you are not face with the messy and slow cart rolling down the tiny corridor.

My only (but severe!) complaint goes for the coffee. I truly cannot understand how a Portuguese company can serve anything other than expresso under the label of coffee. Even if most of the passengers are not Portuguese I believe their countrymen deserve better treatment.

My long-time readers might be finding this post a little odd, due to its strongly personal nature. Not wanting to disappoint their predictions I'll finish it with a small reflection.

Although the executive class seats were mostly vacant (I counted at least 15), the staff did not bring people from the other aisle to fill it. While this could indeed lead to small savings (in drinks mostly) I don't think that was the determinant factor for the decision. It could be argued that executive class passengers, having payed extra, would not find it funny see people who bought cheaper tickets being given the same privileges. This is probably true, but still I believe the real reason lies elsewhere. I'm convinced that the main reason to be the feeling of unfairness that regular class passengers would experience when their neighbour is (randomly) upgraded, but not themselves. This leads to an extremingly interesting phenomena: given a group of people, the overall happiness is higher when they are all given average conditions, compared to the situations where only some are given better than average treatment. This is highly irrational: nobody is actually any worse, but you feel worse because you know there are others who are better, for no plausible reason. This also justifies why happiness seems to be much more correlated to discrepancies in income rather than the average. Does that mean that we'll never feel great unless others feel miserable? That certainly does not seem a flattering trait, but it might well be close to the truth.