Manu Joseph: The business class seat says a lot about inequality that people don’t always want to hear

After an hour, I heard commotion from the economy cabin. They were sweating as there was no air conditioning. Odd, I hadn’t noticed. The screams informed me they were hungry and thirsty too. A person had fainted. What a close shave for me, I thought. But then menacing voices grew.

Some alpha men barged in demanding the aircraft door to be opened or people in coach would die. At that moment, I was sipping golden wine. It looked like my moment of beheading.

But the alphas immediately became meek on seeing us eating and drinking, yawning distances separating each other. It was as if they had been programmed to accept that the business class was their employer class. They regained their composure when they spotted the flight attendants and screamed only at them.

It is an odd thing about people that no matter what their theories of revolution might be, in the real world, they first blame their equals for their misery.

Generally, consumerism is filled with useless products, but I have respect for the business class seat. It is probably the most expensive real estate in the world. It contains an ugly overrated chair, 20 to 22 inches wide, whose greatest distinction is that it can go entirely flat. People pay lakhs for it. But its true value is not in the flatbed.

Some people love the idea of being seen in it; that awkward moment when economy passengers shuffle past. I am fairly confident that they would love it if a bold airline configured business class seats facing the economy class, with no prissy curtains.

But the joy of inequality is a small part of the price.

The value of business class largely comes from the misery of not having it. And the misery of economy class comes from the existence of business class. This is why people pay the price of a small car for a business class seat, and no amount of improvements in coach can save passengers from it.

I was reminded of all this when Air New Zealand recently announced it would be introducing bunk beds in economy—six of them, available in four-hour slots for $500. This, especially for its price, does not address the actual problem with coach—the very existence of business class.

A sense of impoverishment is not an absolute condition; it is a relative experience. It is created by the visible fact that some people have a better life. That is why the argument that the modern poor are better off than medieval royalty is useless as a response to inequality. Every era and region has its own definition of poverty; and every aircraft too.

In a world where nobody had invented the flatbed and there were only economy seats, people would be generally content and uncomfortable. If airliners only had flat beds and no coach, air travel would be only for the rich. It is the mixing of classes within a vessel that fills a mediocre chair with meaning and makes people react in complex ways.

Former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis, a self-declared Marxist who speaks passionately about equality, found himself flying first class (more than once) and wrote about his shame.

This kind of shame confuses me. One, you generally discover you are flying first class long before you reach the airport. Also, in the face of such unbearable shame, the easiest thing to do is exchange your seat with me, or, okay, a pregnant woman.

But then, the juxtaposition of the classes is exactly what makes commercial air travel possible. There is a symbiosis between business class and coach. A business class seat takes up about five times the floor space of an economy seat but generates about eight times the revenue.

If airlines could operate all-business-class flights, they would. Some niche airlines actually do. Historically, airlines have failed trying to do this as they cannot find enough passengers.

The economy cabin provides the volume for the aircraft to fly the route at all. The business class expands the margin and makes it a worthwhile business. But in this relationship, the coach subsidizes the business class more.

The business section shrinks the coach, tightening the supply of economy seats, raising its price. That is why, though it’s not the only reason, a ‘Marxist’ who flies business class is a fraud. On the other hand, the billionaire in his private jet is a saviour of the coach class by not being in competition for seats in commercial airline.

Generally, the people who fly business class are not the super-rich. They are the mere millionaires, even the upper middle-class—the merchant, the lawyer, a Marxist finance minister, the essayist whose heart beats for Naxals, and sometimes me. (Given a choice between being a humanitarian and having the moral clarity to travel business class, I will choose the seat.)

The billionaire, by not being in competition for the business class seat makes it more affordable for the millionaire, whose encroachment on coach increases the price of economy seats. As in an aircraft, so in life. The millionaire occupies the same spaces as coach travellers, usurping opportunities in education, media, start-up culture, finance, arts, while the billionaire is in his own orbit.

But I must say, you may find the humanitarian in business class funny. I find the fan of capitalism in coach class funnier.

The author is a journalist, novelist and screenwriter. His latest book is ‘Why the Poor Don’t Kill Us.’