Skip to content

Experiments in Extreme Luxury

In their unending quest to keep the attention of their wealthiest and most fickle customers, Qatar Airways, Lufthansa, and other airlines have been beefing up their luxury travel options lately—from offering multi-room apartments in first-class sections, to allowing passengers to test-drive Porsches while they wait for connecting flights, to ensuring that macadamia nuts are always served neatly on a plate, never in a bag.

To try to stay apace with the growing trend, competitors are coming up with even more decadent offerings. Here are a few little extras you can expect to see in first-class sections very soon:

1. Instead of waiting in an airport lounge in the terminal, you can explore a big, open field nearby, where wild animals roam. You can shoot one of the animals, and the airline will turn it into an in-flight blanket for you.

2. At any point during the flight, you can yell “Towel me!” and a flight attendant will rush over to place a hot, tea-tree-oil soaked towel around your neck. If the temperature is not to your liking, you are encouraged to berate and threaten the flight attendant until the pilot emerges from the cockpit to personally apologize to you while giving you a back massage.

3. First-class tickets are also delicate, edible wafers.

4. If the plane doesn’t have something you need, you can log on to Amazon.com and order whatever you want. Your order will shoot out of a cannon, catch up with your plane mid-flight, enter the plane through a tube above your head, and fall gently in your lap. If you have an Amazon Prime account, your order will simply materialize in front of you.

5. When you push the music note button next to the seat belt sign, a little man rises up from the floor beneath your seat to whisper-sing your favorite song into your ear.

6. The seat next to you is filled by your personal sommelier for the duration of your flight, who can double as a barber, if needed.

7. At the back of the plane is a small film studio, where you and a guest will be filmed and then green-screened into a summer blockbuster of your choice.

8. If you own a boat (and of course you do), the airline can put an engine in it, turn it into a plane, and fly it, and you, to your destination. For an extra $250,000, you can have real pirates as your crew.

9. A hologram of every passenger’s net worth hovers over their heads; the person with the highest number gets to fly the plane, unsupervised, for fifteen minutes. 

10. Monogrammed steaks.