Yang Jing's ticket was for October 20th, a British Airways flight from London Heathrow Airport to Yanjing International Airport.
Because Yang Jing was in a hurry to go home, he chose the only direct flight from London to Yanjing. There are many flights from London to Yanjing, but this is the only direct flight.
The international aviation industry is not doing very well now, and the number of large four-engine wide-body passenger aircraft in use is decreasing. With the continuous improvement of aircraft technology, the four-engine large aircraft that originally flew intercontinental flights are gradually being replaced by two-engine medium-sized passenger aircraft with more advanced technology.
The biggest cost of a passenger plane is fuel. Although many two-engine medium-sized passenger planes now have a range of more than 10,000 kilometers, if you want to fly the entire 10,000 kilometers without landing, the aircraft must take off with full fuel, that is, take off and fly with full load.
Such flights consume a lot of fuel. Generally speaking, taking off and flying with a full load consumes 40% more fuel than taking off and flying with a half load. In the current situation where the aviation industry is not very prosperous, most international flights will choose to take off and fly with a half load, and then rely on stopovers and refueling to reduce fuel consumption.
This is the main reason why even on hot routes like London to Beijing, few airlines choose to fly directly.
However, the fact that there are few direct flights does not mean that there are no direct flights. At least British Airways has one direct flight from London to Yanjing every day, and China's Air China also has two direct flights every day.
However, when Yang Jing booked the ticket, there were no tickets available for Air China flights, and only a few tickets were left for British Airways flights.
The ticket Yang Jing booked in the evening was for this flight, and Yang Jing was so extravagant that he even booked a first-class ticket.
The ticket price of this kind of direct flight is much higher than that of a flight with a stopover. After all, a direct flight only needs to fly in the air for a little over ten hours to reach Yanjing from London, while a flight with a stopover usually takes more than fifteen hours on the way, and some flights may even be delayed for more than a day on the way...
Yang Jing is now eager to go home and really doesn't want to stay on the road for even a minute longer. So why would he book those flights with transfer stops?
Even if the price of a direct flight is twice or even more than that of a connecting flight, Yang Jing doesn't care.
You have money in your pocket!
So Yang Jing booked a British Airways flight from London to Yanjing.
Considering that two years ago, when Yang Jing flew from Yanjing to London, in order to save money, he bought a flight from Yanjing to London on China Southern Airlines. Because he was an international student, the ticket price was cheap after the discount, only more than 3,400 yuan. As a result, he suffered a lot along the way.
Don’t think that airplane seats are that comfortable. If you want to be comfortable, you have to be in business class at least. Economy class? Don’t even think about it.
It is no exaggeration to say that if you take an economy class flight on a long-haul flight, the pain is not much worse than being squeezed into a hard seat carriage during the Spring Festival travel rush in China. The hard seat carriages during the Spring Festival travel rush in China are indeed very crowded, but at least you can stand up on them and move around occasionally. But if you take an economy class flight, the space is so small that you can't even stretch your legs, and then you have to keep this posture in the air for more than ten hours...
Think about it yourself!
When Yang Jing came to London two years ago, he bought an economy class ticket on China Southern Airlines for the sake of cheapness. However, including the time for transfers and stops, it took Yang Jing nearly twenty hours to fly from Yanjing to London, which almost drove him crazy.
It's not that China Southern Airlines' flights are bad. In fact, China Southern Airlines' service is still top-notch among all domestic airlines. It's just that the economy class of all planes is the same. You can't turn the economy class into business class, right?
If you choose economy class, you must be prepared to be abused.
That experience had left a huge psychological scar on Yang Jing, so when he returned to China this time, Yang Jing said that he would never want to experience that again.
He has plenty of money now. Isn't a first-class ticket for a direct flight only over 10,000 pounds? Buy it! Only a fool would not buy it!
It’s true, although I spent a lot more money on a first-class ticket, the service I received was top-notch.
First of all, let’s talk about security check at the airport. If economy class passengers want to go through security check, they have to wait. It will take at least half an hour to queue up. But if you have a first-class ticket, hey, you can go through security check in five minutes at most - through the security check channel dedicated to first-class cabins.
Secondly, when boarding the plane, first-class passengers also have a dedicated boarding channel and do not have to squeeze in the same channel with other passengers.
It's not so bad for a medium-sized passenger plane that can carry more than 200 people. But if you take an Airbus A380 that can carry more than 550 people, and more than 400 people squeezed into one boarding gate, it's enough to make people collapse...
The flight that Yang Jing took was the latest Boeing 787-9 twin-engine medium-sized passenger aircraft. Because it was an international flight, the plane had as many as 24 first-class seats.
China Southern Airlines also has Boeing 787s, but most of its first-class cabins only have four seats.
After entering the first-class cabin under the guidance of the flight attendant, Yang Jing was also surprised by the luxury of the first-class cabin.
It’s worthy of being a first-class cabin, it’s really spacious!
The first-class seat layout of this Boeing 787-9 "Dreamliner" is 1-2-1, that is, there are four first-class seats in a row, with one seat on each side near the window, and two seats close together in the middle.
There are six rows of first-class seats.
You should know that the area occupied by these twenty-four seats is almost one-third of the entire Boeing 787-9 cabin. The remaining two-thirds of the cabin is occupied by 40 business class seats and the other half by 229 economy class seats.
In other words, the cabin area occupied by these 24 first-class seats is the same as the area occupied by the 229 economy-class seats at the back!
Could it be less spacious?
The gap between first class and economy class is not only reflected in the space, but also in the ticket price.
The economy class ticket for this direct flight is nearly 15,000 yuan, while the first class ticket is 84,000 yuan! Buying a first class ticket can buy five economy class tickets with some extra!
The first-class seats are like small private rooms. When you want to be quiet, you can pull up the partition to form a relatively closed small private room. Of course, if you want to chat with the flight attendant or others, you can pull down the partition to form a large sofa.
The seat Yang Jing booked was in the second row on the front right, near the window, and it was a single seat. The two seats in the middle could be put together to form a double bed...
PS: I would like to thank "Kunpeng3357" for the reward of 200, "hgtyqwas", "Zi Yan Tianjiao", "Riding a Turtle to Heaven", and "Seeing People in the Lights" for the reward of 100!
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