Mr. Bean

Not everyone will agree with that, but FWIW I do

As someone who flies TPAC in Y >80% of the time, I find it manageable. Of course, I am relatively young and not bulky or overly oblong (i.e., I fit comfortably in a standard Y seat). I could easily see this being a problem for others, though.

Perhaps you can get around this by hiring smaller employees?

nkedel

Ditto, although it does depend on frequency; I can comfortably do a TPAC in Y for a week long trip once a quarter (which is, in fact, fairly typical for me) would be much harder if I was on the ground for a shorter time, or having to make the trip vastly more frequently.

deirdre

I find 10 hours in Y on a single flight acceptable if I don't have to work upon arrival but have at least a day to recover. That's true even though I'm no longer young. I also worry about the ageism implications here. It's not lawful to discriminate on age -- or, for that matter, sleep disorder.

Once it gets to 11 hours, though, or 13, no, and I can't imagine 17. I'm going to do 14 in Y in a few months, but I'm not looking forward to it.

nkedel

I find once you're over about 10 hours, the difference between 10,11,14,15 (longest I've done in a single leg) is pretty irrelevant. Either way, I just sleep through it, with a bit of pharmaceutical assistance.

15 at one go (SFO-SYD), or even 14+2 (SFO-HKG-BKK) is also a lot easier for me than 1+10+6 (SFO-LAX-NRT-BKK) as getting back to sleep on the shorter intra-Asia leg is generally much harder, and a 6-hour flight groggy but awake is not fun.

deirdre

Unfortunately, in Y, I find I can generally only sleep 2-3 hours at a stretch, and in J I can sleep the entire flight if it's 6-8 hours.

I really felt the difference between hours 11 and 13 on AMS-SFO, a much longer and more tiresome flight than the shorter outbound flight.

I believe my longest single Y flight to date is either AMS-SFO or SFO-AKL which are both 13-ish hour flights and within minutes of each other in length. It's too freakin' long.

pinworm

If all were subject to the same perks, there would be no incentive to perform, no drive to reach the top. There are rewards to be had for getting there, and it is not easy. Someone with 3 master degrees and 23 years under their belt in the corporate rat race deserves to fly in F for their tenure..someone 5 years in with some BA at 45k per year does not. They have not done their time.

nkedel

There's a lot of individual difference in how easy it is to sleep in coach, although if you do it regularly and haven't already looked into pharmaceutical options I'd encourage speaking to your doctor about it - in my case, I had a good sense of prescription options (and a cooperative GP) due to some occasional insomnia issues before I started flying long-haul.

I find a good J seat much easier to sleep in unaided, although they're not all created equal, just as coach seats aren't.

deirdre

CPAP + two sleep prescriptions at this particular age o' mine. So yeah, that's with chemical assistance. No way would I be able to fly long-haul transpac in Y these days for work.

In my case, it's actually physical pain that keeps me awake, but traveling with vicodin is problematic for some jurisdictions. For example, due to traveling onward to Dubai, it's not something I'm going to use on my 14-hour flight to Hong Kong.

Science Goy

I guess different people value different things, but if someone told me a driving force behind their professional ambition was getting to fly in J/F, I'd have a lot of difficulty not laughing right back at them.

pinworm

No, it's not soley the driving force...it is simply a small perk in the bigger picture. The driving force is the increasing money and the influence. F/J is just icing on the cake.

It's unfortunate that the up and coming generation is now entering the workforce after having been told while growing up that self esteem was more important than anything else. Everyone was a "winner" in their gym classes, and effort was praised over accuracy. They are finding that in the corporate world that not everyone is, and constant praise is not forth coming . If they see a social injustice because I am the director flying in F and they are in Y because they are the entry level associate, they have forgotten their place on the food chain.

Emma1420

I think frequency is pretty important. Because doing a TPAC in Y once a quarter is very different than doing a TPAC every other week in Y. Where I work they don't pay for J for any flight length (well except for our CEO). But, they will pay for premium economy or pay for a higher class Y fare to allow the employee to upgrade to business. And most importantly to me, the policy is applied consistently.

Science Goy

Well, yes. You might want to re-read my statement, and perhaps look up the difference between "a" and "the".

Actually, I think what you're seeing is a growing pool of extremely talented, highly-educated employees who are happy enough to have a job that flying in Y isn't even a factor. My colleagues are all of this mindset and wouldn't even consider asking for J tickets (even the top-level management). I suspect this trend will expand as boards and stockholders realize people will get the job done for one-tenth of the travel cost.

WhiteYUL

B747-437B,

Indeed, this is a very interesting conversation with a wide range of occassionally diverging opinions.

You have made some very good observations above.

I've worked for company that had rules like "over 5 time zones = J", or "intercontinental and over 3000 miles = J" (which then got changed to be "best practice" and went to over 3000 miles + VP or higher, or flights to Japan = J. Which means a 8-9hr overnight TATL, or 10hr SA flight was not quite good enough for J, but 12 hours to TYO was... but I digress...)

My advice, don't over complicate the travel policy, this isn't an algorithm for the next search engine you're creating. It will only serve to confuse rather than guide. (see points a) and d) )

A simple and reasonable policy with the provision for exceptions under certain condition and/or with certain approvals is fine. You may want to develop (over time and with experience in your start-up's life stages) your own guidelines to be consistent with when exception are made - but keep those to yourself as opposed to publishing a miriad of permutations and combinations. (see points a) and b) )

my $0.02...

Cheers,

Whitey

chandi

This is not that uncommon. I have sat n Y with VP level staff from CISCO and other such tech companies flying TPAC to SFO-SYD. They all try and upgrade but once all of them including me but were all booked in to Y.

mwedzi

Would you consider revising the whole policy? That is a long pair of flights. Maybe a revision of the sort, if your flight exceeds the length of a regular work day, accommodations might be made, at least for the last leg?

Never mind, I see you've resolved it. All the best!