Upgrade

I was getting annoyed with British Airways for having flown with them so many times this year, at a not inconsiderable expense, and not been upgraded once.  But yesterday they earned a reprieve by actually giving me an upgrade to business class for my flight back to the US.  This was actually quite unexpected - most of the rare upgrades I've received in the past have been from Seattle to London rather than the other way round.  But the omens were good from the moment I arrived at Heathrow - it wasn't nearly as busy as I was expecting, and I actually got checked in by a real person.  I don't know whether the agent or "the computer" granted me the upgrade, but I'll take it.  So what did I get with the upgrade?  Well, obviously one big thing is access to the airport lounge.  Instead of one of the lounges by the main terminal - which I guessed might be quite busy - I tried to go to a lounge nearer the gate I was departing from.  Unfortunately, as I quickly discovered, there weren't any lounges near the C gates where I was departing from.  The actual nearest was by the B gates.  Thankfully, it wasn't too busy.  Apart from being a nicer area to relax, the airport lounge is great for free food and drink - which was perfect for getting breakfast, having got there very early in the morning.  But I didn't get to stay in the lounge as long as I wanted to as the information board quickly said my flight was boarding, before even the time it said on my ticket.  Annoyingly, this wasn't actually true - so I ended up sitting around for an unnecessarily long time by the departure gate instead of the comfort of the airport lounge.  But the other big advantage of flying business is that you don't have to wait long to board the plane (helped also by the fact that this was also nowhere near a full flight) and you obviously get a much bigger seat.  You have more privacy and more space to stretch out.  I mean it's not perfect - I was next to the toilet (but fortunately it never really disturbed me), I didn't like not being able to see an airplane window from the angle I was sitting at, and you've just a little bit too far away from the TV screen to make playing games where you press buttons on the screen just too impractical.  But all in all you can't complain and I certainly got a lot more sleep on my flight than I might have otherwise.  And you get better food - well, it's still airplane food (for example, the beef fillet was like a ball of rubber), but they serve it to you in courses rather than all at once so it feels a bit more civilized.  I still felt like I probably didn't make the most of my time in business class (and I never feel like I belong or deserve entitled treatment - the socialist side of me really objects to there being any kind of class distinctions in travel).  I think people who travel in business and first class are probably more used to demanding and expecting better treatment than what I'm used to.  For example, rather than helping myself to extra food and drink from the galley I'm more used to waiting for an air attendant to come round with a drinks cart.  But it was a good journey back - not as much turbulence as I was expecting given the strong winds in the Seattle area, arrived back before schedule, passed quickly through baggage claim and passport control (you have to pick up your checked luggage now before going through customs - which is unusual, but works out well), and driving back home on a weekend was much better than it would have been on a weekday.  Let's hope it's not my last upgrade for a while!