Originally Posted by
zaphod424
As others have said, if you want or need to fly in J you'll have to pay for it. Booking WT or WT+ and hoping for an upgrade will most likely end in disappointment, and in your case, serious discomfort.
Depending on where you're going you could try to break up the journey, tedious yes, but it'll give you a chance to stretch and lie down at the connections, even spend a night if you want to. 15 hours implies Tokyo, maybe HK?
In which case you could do something like LHR-DOH (6hrs on BA/Qatar), DOH-MAA/DEL/CCU (~4.5hrs on Qatar), MAA/DEL/CCU - HKG (~5.5hrs on Qatar/Cathay), HKG-HND (4hrs on Cathay/JAL). Still means 6 hours at a time, and it does make the total travel time much longer, you might want to spend a night or 2 en route, but that'll still be cheaper than a business class ticket.
Yes that is an option, but with my experience I believe that it's generally best to just get it over with in one go. The biggest fear (for me) has always that my back would give up mid-journey and we'd then be stuck midway needing maybe 4-5 days to recover before continuing or returning home, with the associated extra accommodation and flight costs.
Saying that, this year I broke my own rule by breaking our journey for the first time in over 20 years, mainly because there was nowhere we fancied going on BA, so we did LHR-DOH, DOH-DPS in Qatar J with about two hours in DOH. I managed with my spinal cord stimulator turned up high and an elasticated support belt to keep my lumber area rigid. Pain free? Not entirely, and I was in J. Would I do it again? Probably, although the return was a bit of a chore TBH. The OP's spine sounds in an even worse condition than mine so I would not recommend it, especially with 2, 3 or even 4 seperate economy flights in your example routing.
My advice? If it's a personal trip either pay for J and do it in one go or, if that's not an option, go somewhere closer to home. If it's a business trip insist on J or refuse to go. TBH I can't believe that any business would even allow an employee to fly in economy with a serious spinal condition let alone force them to do so. Luckily for me my employer had an all J travel rule, but when that was reduced to trips over five hours I had dispensation to fly J at all times.