Since I semi-retired 5 years ago and started funding all of my own travel, I have been a committed back-of-the-bus flyer.

I have flown international business class quite a few times, either on op-ups or OPM (I miss OPM!) and never been impressed enough to fork out 4-figure sums of my own cash for it.

You still have the climb-over factor, quite a lot of cabin noise and very little privacy. For this reason, I have generally preferred to sit down the back and either spend the extra cash at the destination or save it for another trip.

However, when I spotted a fare of 2371GBP for MAN-LHR-ORD//MIA-LHR-MAN in F, I began to wonder whether the extra step up in comfort, privacy and service in First would convince me that it really is worth stumping up the cash.

Consequently, I am taking off next Thursday, November 1 for my first flight in F.

I thought about posting this either in the Trip Reports or Travel Buzz sections, as it is intended more as an evaluation of premium class travel in general, but since I am flying with BA, I figured this would be the place to get the best pre-flight advice on maximising the experience, as well as finding out whether whatever experience I have is typical for these flights

I am flying out on a 777 in 2A and back on an A380 in 2K (travelling solo). I chose these seats after reading various threads on this forum (I have no status so row 1 seems to be out of bounds).

I have deliberately booked 4-hour connections at LHR in both directions to try out everything I can in the lounges, although as a 40yo single male I might skip the spa treatment in favour of another kind of liquid indulgence!

I'm not quite sure what the future holds for my travels after this experiment. Will I be scraping together mountains of Avios from every conceivable source, scouring ex-EU deals and selling my body (not sure who would buy it, but anyway...) to keep myself quaffing the Kir Royales up front? Or will I be back in the cheap seats with my can of lager and a slightly fatter wallet digging into my backside?