I took a first class flight from Chicago to Eagle/Vail. There are, of course, a number of reasons I do this. The warm nuts and real wine (as opposed to the wine in those little bottles that is always really cold and rarely even potable). If you have the time and energy you can find inexpensive first class tickets, so that helps.
Among other things, there is the premier waiting lounge, the general absence of children in first class, special baggage handling (your luggage gets a big orange priority label and comes out first). There are no issues about how big your carry-on is. And the lovely meal (curried chicken salad wraps). There are secondary issues such as the great unwashed, all the people seeing you in first class which while pleasant isn’t really why I do it but it does have a certain je ne sais quoi.
That said, American Airlines was 4 hours late getting out of Chicago. Mechanical problems not weather related. I missed a day of skiing. You cannot use the Premier waiting lounge if you only have a domestic first class ticket. I did get to board first but so what? I still had to sit out in the waiting area with the kid who was freaking out over some food related thing. On the return trip (two hours late, mechanical issues) no first class lounge in Vail. Nearly half of the first class section was children. Well-behaved children. But who pays for their kids to sit in first class? They didn’t eat a thing (and the 3 parents didn’t drink I noticed, suspiciously).
Oh well, it was only a 2 hour flight and I survived. Relatively unscathed.
