Originally Posted by wise2u

Dont take offense FTers but you accumulate airline miles through work or promotions or even milage runs to keep your balances high enough where spending points on the minor luxuries of first class seems like the best use for them. For those of us who don't travel for business and have to hit every promo to get 100k miles per year the desicion is more difficult. Forgive the blasphamy but I have to say it....air travel is just transportation.

Just because you get the first class treatment (treated like a rich person as the term implies) free booze in a quiet lounge and more on the plane, you get to board first, and other than the lie down seats on limited routes/planes a you get a little more comfortable seat with extra (a foot?) legroom, a more attentive FA, more room to store your crap and an amenity bag with pjs and a toothbrush. these things are all distractions to the fact, that like the coach passengers who pay substantially less cash/points, you are herded like cattle into a tube to breathe recycled air for an extended amount of time. We all wind up in the same destination at the same time, you just pay a lot more to do it in a little more comfort. (and dont tell me its that big of a difference, unless you fly lear jets and private charters) I've flown in first and the big difference is the vacation for you starts when you get to the airport, for the rest of us it starts after we leave it.

It comes down to what you can afford and what you are accustomed to using points for. if we started getting used to upgrades, or take a few trips to Europe in first class we may never look back either, but until then if coach for free gets us there twice we can make due with it.