Sky Boss

We just got back from a two-week trip to Thailand including a friend’s wedding. I’ll have more Thailand posts soon, but the trip itself is fresh in my mind. My wife likes to travel, but hates to fly, so with such long flights we decided to splurge and go first class.

Going to Bangkok we took Emirates. Emirates first class is crazy expensive, but the experience is over the top, ridiculously amazing. At JFK airport, you start at the Emirates lounge with nice food and drinks, and you board the plane not from a gate, but directly from the lounge.

The first class seat isn’t a seat at all, it’s a “suite”. You have a door you can close. The screen for movies is huge, of course the seat flattens to a bed and the goodies are plentiful. Champagne greets you and they even bring you pajamas for the flight.

The food is delicious, and you can have it whenever you want. There is even a shower available at the end of the flight. You only get 5 minutes of water, but I had to try it. When we arrived in Dubai for our layover, an Emirates representative met us to drive us in a golf cart to the next gate (well, the next lounge). Then we repeat the process for the flight to Bangkok. I don’t know if we’ll ever do that again, but wow, it was a treat.

Within Thailand we flew two short flights. For these, regional airlines have frequent inexpensive flights, so we flew VietJet. No fancy first class here, but the flights were 1 and 2 hours, so no biggie. And for a few dollars more, VietJet offered something called SkyBoss. It looked like it got you to the front of the plane and included checked baggage. We had a lot of luggage, so we did it.

It turns out that SkyBoss has two other important perks that I wasn’t aware of. The first was a short (non-existent really) check-in line. That was nice. But the second perk was the best. If you have SkyBoss, your luggage comes out absolutely first. Seeing your four bags come out right away and leaving before everyone else was so nice.

When we got home to JFK yesterday, waiting for our bags to arrive on the carousel, we really missed SkyBoss.