Originally Posted by Jorgen

Wah wah, I'm getting a free first-class flight, and I wish it was a slightly better free first-class flight!

Really, the economics of first class travel is a weird thing. In order to fill a first class cabin with paying customers, you need to have a lot of pointlessly rich (but not rich enough to take a private jet) folks sitting around wanting to take fancy holidays in faraway locations. The Middle East and certain parts of East Asia are full of these folks. The United States isn't -- there's a lot of rich people but they tend to be working most of the time, and when they do feel like spending some money pointlessly they tend to stay within the US rather than jetting halfway around the world.