The Best Thing About Business Class Is Economy Class

The best business class flight I have ever taken was with Air India. As the flight was taxiing for take-off, it stopped on the tarmac. There was a snag, and we had to stay in the aircraft. It was over 40° Celsius outside. Peak Delhi summer. As though in apology, the cabin crew began serving a meal. At the time I didn’t realize the service was only in business class. There was wine too. After an hour, I heard commotion from the economy cabin. They were sweating as there was no air conditioning. Odd, I hadn’t noticed. The screams informed me they were hungry and thirsty too. A person had fainted. What a close shave for me, I thought. But then menacing voices grew.

Some alpha men barged in demanding that the aircraft door be opened or people in coach would die. At that moment, I was sipping golden wine. It looked like my moment of beheading. But the alphas immediately became meek on seeing us eating and drinking, yawning distances separating each other. It was as though they had been programmed to accept that the business class was their employer class. They regained their composure when they spotted the flight attendants and screamed only at them. It is an odd thing about people that no matter what their theories of revolution might be, in the real world, they first blame their equals for their misery.
Generally, consumerism is filled with useless products, but I have respect for the business class seat even though it is just an ugly overrated chair, 20 to 22 inches wide, whose greatest distinction is that it can go entirely flat. But its true value is not in the flatbed. It’s not the joy of inequality, either, which is a small part of the price.
Some people do love the idea of being seen in it; that awkward moment in smaller aircraft when economy passengers have to shuffle past. But the true value of business class largely comes from the misery of not having it. And the misery of economy class comes from the existence of business class. This is why the business class is probably the most expensive real estate in the world and no amount of improvements in coach can save passengers from its traumas.
I was reminded of all this when Air New Zealand recently announced it would be introducing bunk beds in economy—six of them, available in four-hour slots for $500. This, especially for its price, does not address the actual problem with coach—the very existence of business class.

A sense of impoverishment is not an absolute condition; it is a relative experience. It is created by the visible fact that some people have a better life. That is why the argument that the modern poor are better off than medieval royalty is useless as a response to inequality. Every era and region has its own definition of poverty; and every aircraft too.
In a world where nobody had invented the flatbed and there were only economy seats, people would be generally content and uncomfortable. If airliners only had flat beds and no coach, air travel would be only for the rich, as it was before. It is the slow creep of equality, and the mixing of classes within a vessel that fills a mediocre chair with meaning and makes people react in complex ways.
Former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis, a self-declared Marxist who speaks passionately about equality, found himself flying first class and wrote about his shame. This kind of shame confuses me. One, you generally discover you are flying first class long before you reach the airport. Also, in the face of such unbearable shame, the easiest thing to do is exchange your seat with me, or, okay, a pregnant woman.
But then, the juxtaposition of the classes is exactly what makes commercial air travel possible. There is a symbiosis between business class and coach. A business class seat takes up four to five times the floor space of an economy seat but generates seven to eight times the revenue. If airlines could operate all-business-class flights, they would. Some airlines actually do, but they are niche. Historically, airlines have failed trying to do this as they cannot find enough passengers. The economy cabin provides the volume for the aircraft to fly the route at all. The business class expands the margin and makes flying a worthwhile business. But in this relationship, the coach subsidizes the business class more.
The business section shrinks the coach, tightening the supply of economy seats, raising its price. That is why, though it’s not the only reason, a ‘Marxist’ who flies business class is a fraud. On the other hand, the billionaire in his private jet is a saviour of the coach class by not being in competition for seats in commercial airline.

People who fly business class are not the super-rich. They are the mere millionaires, even the upper middle-class—the merchant, the lawyer, a Marxist finance minister, the essayist whose heart beats for Naxals. The billionaire, by not being in competition for the business class seat makes it more affordable for the millionaire, whose encroachment on coach increases the price of economy seats.

As in an aircraft, so in life, the millionaire is a bigger perpetrator of inequality than the billionaire, even though they lead laments about the evil. The millionaire occupies the same spaces as coach travellers, usurping opportunities in education, media, start-up culture, finance, arts, while the billionaire is in his own orbit, chiefly competing with other billionaires.
But I must say, you may find the humanitarian in business class funny. I find the fan of capitalism in coach class funnier.

(Read Manu Joseph’s latest book, ’Why the Poor Don’t Kill Us’.)