The earth is rounded 3

If you see the earth from North side...



The blue routing is for normal person. Hidekis took the red routing. You can see how foolish it is to take the red routing which is almost twice the distance than the blue one.

Anyway. Why am I sitting in the business class? Most of airline employee has so called "Flight benefit". As long as there is a seat available, employees can fly very cheap with stand-by basis. Airlines do not lose money with it.

Amongst airlines, American companies are generally good on benefit. The company where I used to work put employees in First class. If not available then business class. The european airlines I used to work before gave only economy class as customers are the priority.

Well it does not have to be like that. Most of the no-show occurs in the higher class as those expensive tickets have no restriction for changing flights. So higher classes would likely have empty seat in the end. So why not assigning employees in there? I would not agree to upgrade economy customer to business class usless airline disservice such as over booking occurs. The difference between economy and business on the longhaul flights are usually more than a few thousands euro. They should not upgrade customers easily. That would disrespect paid business customers.

How do I justify employee to sit in higher classes? Well, airline employees do not get good salary in general. So they deserve it. OK?

So today, Hidekis was lucky that there was only one seat left on UA845 and that was the business class. My flights today were:

Depart Frankfurt at 08:25 --- arrive Chicago at 10:27. Journey time 9h27m

2h32m waiting time

Depart Chicago at 12:59 --- arrive Tokyo at 16:15 (next day). Journey time 13h16m


Changing planes in the state is unpleasent. Even you do not stay in the States, you must go through the immigration. Furthermore, after September11 incident, security became tight and everytime you go through immigration, they take your finger print and photos that makes whole process very slow.

I do not have a good luck in Chicago every time. This time I see it would go smoothly, but about 10 people before my turn, they stopped the visitor line and let US citizen go first as the queue for US citizen was longer. So all the visitor had to wait more than a half an hour.

To reduce any of those stress, Hidekis never bring checked baggage. I bring small enough bag for carry on (if you change planes in the US, you need to claim bags and re-check in).

Chicago O'Hare Airport, the world NO1 busiest airport has 4 terminals and 8 concourse.
My UA883 bound for Tokyo leaves from Terminal1. Arriving at Terminal1 by airtrain, I quickly had one cigarette, then to gate. Busy, busy.

I know this flight is busy flght. I know it. But still not happy. The boarding pass I got shows "Economy class".

At least my seat was in the Economy plus area that has extra legroom in it. But economy is still economy. I used one special cushion for my back and another one for neck to sleep.


13hours later, UA883 is now at final approach. Senery below is difinitely Japan. I departed toward the opposit direction than other Japanese people I saw in Frankfurt, but here I am, back in Japan somehow.




UA883 was in the boeing777 old livery. Average opinion says the old colour is better than the new one. I actually like the new one. What do you think?