TOM FRANCIS
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Seat Quest 2010: The Lounge

Club World isn’t first class, but it makes it hard to imagine what is. Do their seats go beyond horizontal, into back-breaking reflex angles? Do they face out into the open air, to guarantee three miles of leg room? After the champagne, three course meal and brandy you get in Club World, is there a heroin course?

At the airport, a thought occured: I wonder if this gets me into the lounge? I’ve travelled with people who have lounge access before, and it’s a mystical experience. It’s like being given a gigantic apartment, stocked with well prepared food, good espresso machines, a great wine rack, and a full selection of classy whiskeys, cognac, gin and cocktail ingredients. There are no staff, no prices, no explicit rules – you just help yourself.

Directions pointed to the ‘BA Conchord Lounge’, which led me to a fat man by the only door no-one in the airport was heading to. I wasn’t really sure how to say “Does my undeserved, unpaid for, random upgrade ticket get me in here?” with any degree of class, so I just showed him my boarding pass.

I noticed they’d written ‘BLUE’ on it, to make sure no British Airways staff mistook me for a Silver, Gold, Platinum, Sapphire, Diamond, Uranium or worthwhile member. I’m only a BLUE member because BA’s Executive Club is the worst RPG in the world. Every year, they steal all your experience. It’s not if you haven’t used it in a while, and it’s not because you’re not close to levelling up. I was a few points off Silver Membership, I’d used it a month or so back, and was about to use it again when BAM. Zero XP.

Blue does not get you into the BA Lounge, but Club World, I reckoned, would. The fat man, in one of the most expertly polite and helpful rejections I’ve received, explained that the Club Lounge was downstairs, then ‘back on yourself’. I pointed beneath us to confirm. He nodded.

When I actually got there, I realised it wasn’t just below where we’d been standing, it was actually in the same building. He’d made me walk two hundred metres just to avoid using the entrance reserved for Conchord members.

It was a sort of multi-story complex of lounges, and every path you takes leads you quickly and easily to the Conchord Lounge you’re not allowed into, unless you’re constructed from over 70% gold.

Luckily, a well-dressed man ahead of me helpfully blundered into every false turn towards the Conchord Lounge before realising, and redirecting himself towards the lowly Club one he and I were only good enough for. I tailed him at a safe distance to avoid each mistake.

Pretty soon, it became clear that the Club Lounge was actually above the Conchord one, making the fat man’s misdirection all the more cruel and bizarre. This general lobby area is open to everyone, only the 2D plane dividing it from the main concourse is exclusive to Conchorders.

The Club World one, marked by a life-size statue of a horse with a lampshade on its head, was just as I remembered it. And just like the Conchord Lounge, which we’d passed on the way up. Leather chairs, low coffee tables, free internet, huge sofas, wine, whiskey, brandy, gin, vodka, cognac, armagnac, chilled beer, and two hundred meters of buffet: crusty rolls, brie, pastrami, pasta salad. Other, more pungent pastas and other, more confusing rolls.

I was doing calculations in my head as to the order and quantities in which I could eat and drink these things without being ill. I’d need to avoid caffeine, since I planned to pass out on the plane, but I formulated a way to cram in pastrami and brie rolls, hot chocolate, fusilli and feta salad, gin and tonic, and the most expensive whiskey I could find that I hadn’t tried. Something old and tasting deliciously of oppression.

By the time I saw the signs, it was too late. The signs said “Ice-cream”. They signpost their ice-cream. But I was already out of both time and capacity, and slightly drunk.

At the gate, there was a ‘fast track’ queue for boarding, and my heart sunk when I saw that yes, it was for Club World passengers. I’d have to use it, it’d be ridiculous not to, but I’d also have to endure the “Asshole.” stares of everyone waiting.

In fact, though, with only one boarding pass scanner, the fast-track queue ended up moving slower than the public one. I was relieved, then, after a while, actually a little indignant.

The guy in front of me started bitching about it loudly to the person ahead.

“Asshole,” I thought.

Next: I actually fly.

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