Dead Air

First class passengers on board a nine-hour British Airways flight from London to Delhi last week were a tad miffed when two economy class passengers were upgraded to first class. To add insult to injury, it turns out that one of the upgraded passengers had the indecency to be dead, and the other passenger (the daughter of the dead woman) spent the entire flight crying and generally being a pain in the ass to the full-fare passengers. "The corpse was strapped into the seat but because of turbulence it kept slipping down on to the floor," Paul Trinder, a businessman, was quoted as saying. "It was horrific. The body had to be wedged in place with lots of pillows."

You see, this is why I don't fly first class anymore. The last thing I want to see across the aisle when I'm draining my fifth gin and tonic is a slowly decomposing cadaver from the cattle car section. "But Lee," you may ask, "I thought you always fly first class? Isn't that what the privileged and elite life of an Alexanderpool is all about?" And that's when I'll simply shake my head ruefully and say, "Ah, but you forget about super-secret ultra-exclusive premium-level awesome class, where each seat is the size of a leather couch and all the flight attendants are former Victoria Secret models with borderline nymphomania and crippling self-esteem issues." You could try to make a reservation for your next flight, but I should warn you that they're pretty strict about only accepting passengers with the requisite level of awesome.