Giving thanks to the inventor of 71D

71D - the digits and letter have a beautiful ring to them - because I just [well, over a week now - I just remembered I had not posted this entry!] flew back from Sydney on a massive A380 passenger jet, and I was not able to upgrade to business class.


How is that I, American Airlines Executive Platinum all-around Special Flyer, could not get an upgrade? Because AA handed over all their Australia flights to Qantas and even though my EP status on AA gets me into Qantas First Class Lounges (and that lounge in Sydney is truly fantastic), it does not get me anywhere when it comes to upgrades.


So I had to fly for 15 hours in economy. How about the exit row or bulkhead? Nope, they don't even assign those till day of flight....but somehow my friends at American Airlines were able to reserve seat 71D for me. "So what?" you ask. So...let's visit seatguru.com and see what they have to say about 71D. First, the picture:

Ah...notice the lovely green color on 71D - it is something every seasoned flyer looks for. That means something good, actually positive, is going on in that seat. What could it be?

Class: Economy
Seat Type: Recliner
Power: AC Power
Video: Personal TV
Review: Seat 71D has extra legroom since there is no seat directly in front of it.


Frabjous joy! Extra legroom! AC Power! And they aren't kidding. 71D is an incredible seat. There must have been five FEET of open space between my seat and 70D. And, yes, I could plug in the power cord of my laptop. So what did I do with my lovely seat? Well, let's see, I managed to sleep for perhaps one hour of the 15 hour flight. And probably for another ten hours, I worked on my laptop.

A whole bunch of quizzes for the PL/SQL Challenge, bug fixes for Code Tester V2, blog postings, specifications for this and that....then I decided, what the heck, watch a movie on their fine high def personal video system. So I picked out Iron Man 2, heavily branded with Oracle Corporation silliness.

What a poor excuse for a movie. I actually felt a little embarrassed for Larry Ellison for being in it and, well, me for watching it. What I don't get is how film companies can spend so much money on these productions and still do such a piss-poor job of plot construction and dialogue.

But it did pass the time, and then I was home - not a bad flight at all, all things considered - and all because of the inventor of 71D!