What do F class pax look like?

White, male, between 35-55, traveling alone. Yes, there are many who aren't, of course, but the number of travelers of this description in F is usually greater than the number of the same description in Y.

Best,

T PM L

You probably mean "lady" - being a woman is a matter of biology. A lady requires a bit more.

Thanks for answering your question for me.

i like it when im at the airport in line to check in and i get the line guardian telling me that the line is for first/biz/1K/GS pax only..it is fun to calmly reply "i know" and continue to stand in line while i await my F/C boarding pass. most of the the time, during actual boarding, i dont get many looks from people despite being 25 and in jeans/tshirt type attire.

Don't feel bad. I'm a white male in my mid-30s, and even when I'm dressed nicely, the other elites try to cut in front of me at boarding, at the elite security lanes, etc. For whatever reason they seem to feel entitled to cut in front of anyone.

I'm going to have to dust-off my FFP manuals... I'm sure I read it's one of the many perks of attaining status.

I feel ya on this one. I'm in my 40s, but I generally travel home each week on early Friday morning instead of the Overcrowded Thursday Consultant Express. The advantage is that I don't have to scramble out of the office on Thursday afternoon with a task potentially unfinished; I can complete what I'm doing with minimal stress. And I'm still home by noon Friday, so I'm not losing "all that much" time back home during the weekend.

The result of my schedule is that I generally travel uber-casual and unshaved on Friday morning...in fact, in the summer I'm usually in t-shirt and athletic shorts (not even jeans). Oh, and I also travel with a backpack, not a rollaboard. So, I totally do NOT look like a 100K+ mile/year business traveling consultant.

Since I'm also a proud and aggressive gate-stalker (note to all of you: do NOT ever attempt to get in front of me upon boarding - I WILL get my convenient overhead storage before you), it's fun every week to observe how folks don't think I'm an elite FC flyer and think they can jump ahead of me to board. (And like the poster above that I quoted, I also enjoy surprising the line guardians at the ticket counter (if I don't OLCI) and/or the elite TSA line, since I totally look like the infrequent-flying rube.)

I meant exactly what I said. We are talking about F pax here, not walmart people.

Back in the 90s I once found myself in F seated next to a guy who looked just like a construction worker.

We started talking.

Turns out he really was a construction worker, or at least had been. He was also very smart and very interesting to talk with.

A few years earlier he worked on a large project in Houston. He figured that any company he had never heard of until then, but was building a complex that big, had to be going places. So he took the family nest egg and invested it, early on, in Dell Computer.

When we met, it had been a couple of years since he last worked a construction job - or any other kind. Paid F was his normal mode of travel.

As a female I get the looks as well. My experience is that its the 40+ Males in suits that cop the attitude. I don't let them mess with me and hold my ground when they try to get in front of me or try to tell me I don't belong. Drives me nuts.

The only visible differences between "First Class" passengers and "others" in my experience involve carry-ons and appearance. First Class pax rarely use black plastic garbage bags instead of rollaboards, and in most cases trim the long hairs growing from the prominent moles on their chins or cheeks.

While I've flown in both compartments on both domestic and international flights, one day back in 1994, pondering the future, maneuvered out of a executive level job, and about to be self-employed, and with two daughters in college, I made a serious life-style decision. I needed about $150,000 in after-tax cash to insure both them (if personally able and willing) received enough education to make a living. I didn't want to borrow money - and most of all, as a former banker, I knew that "education loans" combined being a conjob with insuring nothing but years of monthly payments for struggling youngsters and young families.

My decision was to travel in the back of the bus, and to divert all those dollars of mine (and those which could be inveigled from clients) into building my "Cash for College" fund. While I had to borrow from myself to pay part of the freight and didn't realize all of the set aside until several years after the last daughter graduated, one morning I woke up, rewarded by years of flying Economy and driving Ford Expeditions instead of Lincoln Navigators, to have met the self-obligation. My efforts on behalf of my daughters have been rewarded by both, the oldest a housewife and teacher whose husband supports her grandly just over the hill from Hollywood, while the youngest, flies Economy, has owned both a Mercedes and a Land Rover, and as an exec pulls down more salary than I ever did.

Shucks, after all the abstinence, I don't even feel the need to fly in First (although I enjoy Business Class reward tickets, when there's an ocean to cross).

I'm not implying that a whole lot of the folks I see in First have their priorities a bit twisted, or that everybody here has daughters to send to college (or sons who at least can do manual labor in the Summer to cover fraternity dues), but reading some of the godawful horsecr*p posted here and listening to some of those teetering on the edge of the red carpets in airports through which I pass, I'm certain that any number would greatly benefit from a substantial readjustment of personal and professional perspective.

Like the customers waiting to spend their Christmas Gift Cards from Sharper Image, the stores with gewgaws and gimmicks for the over-funded and under-intellected, awakening one morning unable to buy with the cards or recoup the loss, you may end up with obligations and needs for which some of the extra you spent of frippery and First Class tickets would go a long way toward covering.

I've never paid for a single FC ticket. For me (and I'm sure a large number of other FTers, if not the majority of 'em) it's all about flying enough to gain status on our airline of choice in order to sit in the front of the bus.

And since my customer pays my expenses, by being on the road I SAVE my family money by not having to spend personal cash on day-to-day expenses like, uh, food.

Not saying it's all peaches and cream...I'd love to make the same $$$ locally and not have to be away from my family all week and endure the indignities that Air Travel 2008 require. I am, however, saying that at least in my case, any "'tude" comes from just flying too frickin' often, not because of $$$ spent doing it.

I normally don't care what the pax around me look like but on one occasion I specifically noticed a "walmart type person" in F. A few months ago I was traveling BDL-IAD-FRA in paid C, so I had F BDL-IAD. My seat had been selected maybe 6 weeks before my flight. All of a sudden, about a week before the flight, my aisle is changed to a window and I was livid. Of course, we all know that means it was a FAM.

I mentioned before the flight to the person I was traveling with that they would have a FAM sitting next to them. When we got on the the aircraft my friend mentioned something like, "Hey, I thought this was your seat - weren't you sitting here? How did he get your seat?" The FAM said something to the extent of "Oh I bought this ticket a couple weeks ago and have had this seat." Lies.

Anyway...the supposed FAM looked like he just crawled out from under a car and was a mess. Great cover

That's a very good question. It happened to me when I had missed the priority First boarding and I had to board with general boarding. As I was putting my carry on into the overhead bin in the F cabin, the FA said, "Sir, you can't put our bag here". I was stunned and gave her a puzzled look with a question mark. She added "This is for First Class only". I told her I was seated in First Class. I think she was so embarassed that she did not know what to say. A simple apology, "I am sorry" with motions to help, although no help was needed would have been nice. I was not dressed in shorts and/or flip flops. I was dresed in business attire with a nice jacket and tie as I had just come straight from a meeting.

On a recent occasion when the GA opened the door to the jetway after wheel chair boarding for NW DCA-DTW flight, and made an announcement about how she was going to board the flight-First Class followed by Gold and Platinum elites and then general boarding-- about fifty people congregated near the red carpet circling around the red carpet. Obviously some of them were not in FC as there were only 16 seats. I was behind the crowd. I did not want to single anyone out to make a fuss as it's impossible to know who doesn't belong there. There was not even a single line around the red carpet. I asked the person ahead of me, where FC passengers should line up. He smiled and and said that he was wondering the same thing. The GA gthen made an anouncement, "Ladies and gentlemen, at this time we are boarding First cabin only. That means passengers seated in rows 1 through 4. I will call Gold and Platinum elites in a few moments". Some people stepped back creating a couple of holes in the crowd. As we got into the cabin, the same gentleman I had spoken to was going to sit next to me. I was so glad I had not assumed that he was crowding the red carpet. As I sat down I made a comment to him, " I was wondering why there were 50 people when the F cabin has only 16 seats." He nodded in agreement and said "and they don't step back even when ONLY First class is called", and referred to a few people who were ahead of us in the line and were in the process of settling down in their coach seats.

On some flights the boarding does get out of hand despite the GA's trying to maintain order.

I do remember boarding a weekend KLM flight AMS-LHR (I'd stayed over a couple of extra nights from a work trip, and was really quite dishevelled). There were no C pax at all on the flight, and the GA called élite passengers up to board first (unusually for KLM at AMS).

I couldn't be bothered to fight my way through the crowds, so just waited for the general boarding announcement, but she wasn't going to give up. She went on "come on, don't be shy, I know we have at least one platinum passenger today!"

Turns out I was the only élite passenger on a flight with no C passengers. It was quite a spectacle.