Sleeping is for Kids

Sleeping is for Kids

I’m on yet another intercontinental flight tonight. And guess what I’m doing? That’s right, I’m not sleeping. I am on a Delta Boeing 767-300 that departed JFK at 4:28 pm and is landing at Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam at 5:20 am local time. That’s a 6:39 minute flight covering 3,214 miles. I’m in seat 2A in business class. There are no first class seats. Only Emirates and Singapore and the like seem to have retained that sort of luxury. The rest of the aviation world seems ready to acknowledge that fewer people will pay the extra. Business class seats are generally OK and not uncomfortable, but either my standards for being able to sleep have changed or they’ve missed the boat on these flat-bed contraptions.

Back in the 1980’s and 1990’s I traveled a lot for business. While most of my investment banking colleagues were going east/west between London, New York, L.A., Tokyo, Hong Kong and Singapore, I was on a very different program. In the early ‘80’s I played that game, but by ‘85 I was on the north/south circuit. I was responsible for everything in the world that was NOT developed. In fact, I started the Emerging Markets trend in many ways, including the naming convention. That meant Latin America, Africa, SE Asia, the Middle East and Eastern Europe. I remember during the last Iran crisis trying to figure out how to get people to Islamabad, Pakistan for a presentation without flying over Iranian air space. In the ‘90’s I shifted to running the Private Banking business, which went to a lot of the same places and then some. I traveled 40% of the time.

During those years I had to sleep on planes and I did. Mostly the seats were comfy recliners that didn’t go quite flat, but went far enough back to allow for sleep. I remember the flights to Buenos Aires lasting sixteen hours and my getting a good ten hours of sleep with minimal jet lag due to the north/south thing. Africa and the Middle East usually involved flying overnight to Europe and then transiting on the day flight into wherever. Those were the days of the Concorde or “sharp-nose” as the Brits used to call it. You could hop London to New York in less than three hours and sleep in your own bed. The seats were less roomy, but adequate. The big problem for a tall person like me was using the bathroom. I actually watched one large Scot cause a commotion by peeing from the hallway into the toilet. Those were the days.

The first class cabins of these intercontinental flights were like a clubhouse. The chances of seeing people you knew on the more esoteric circuits like to Latin America, was quite high. I remember one flight to B.A. where an Argentine deal-doer was explaining a situation to me with such passion that he knocked his red wine all over his sleeping wife and her white wool Chanel pantsuit. And on the Euro and Asian flights you had a good chance of bumping into or sitting next to famous people. I remember sitting next to Tommy Smothers and asking him if his Mom really loved Dicky best. I also got seated next to Cindy Lauper at the height of her “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” fame. She spent the flight from London ignoring her sleeping boyfriend of the moment, and instead buying out the duty free onboard shop for me. What a shopper.

I am reminded of an old acquaintance in the Latin debt game of the ‘80’s. He couldn’t sleep on a flight back to NY from Venezuela and got drunk. When he was denied use of the first class bathroom (he was in business class), he showed his displeasure by hopping up on the service cart, dropping his trousers and shitting on the cart, using the linen for his toilet paper. He was banned for life from flying, so sleeping on flights became irrelevant to him.

So, now that the fully-automated business class flat seats are all the rage I can’t sleep a wink on them. My wife can get 2/3 hours, but I get 30 minutes tops. I think what they have gained in flatness they have forsaken in cushioning. Maybe it’s my 65-year-old hips that are to blame, but I am no bigger than I used to be and yet I’m a lot less comfortable. I’m inclined to blame the airline seats. Some ergonomic engineer has figured out how to make a space for my feat inside the side table of the guy in front of me. The only problem is that it’s somewhere between a closed Catscan tube and a coffin. Once my feet are in, they have to stay put. Maybe people with normal size 10 shoes can get more movement for their feet, but my numb size 14W are pretty much locked in. At least the numbness has finally found a use for me.

Who would have thought I would be complaining about business class seats? But at least the in-flight entertainment systems provide us insomniacs lots to do while we fly. I invested in a company once, called Co-Kinetic, that migrated its business model and eventually became the in-flight software gurus. I never made money on it, but at least I got my money back a few years ago. Just to be sure I have stuff to do, I always load up my iPad with movies I want to watch or rewatch. Back up plans are an important part of airline insomnia.

I have never been a fan of the shower-in-the-lounge program on arrival. I always book the room at my hotel for early arrival and go and sack out for a few hours. Then I sleep great my first night in-country. The truth is that I have neither ever solved the jet lag problem, nor have I ever been especially plagued by it. I have a colleague who travels more than me now and he is always walking around like a sleepless zombie. Since I always see him sleeping throughout the flights and then in the car service and usually at the dinners, I can only assume that he parties hard because he is ten years my junior and has no other plausible excuse.

I will land in Amsterdam in 15 minutes. We are 45 minutes early on a flight that left 10 minutes late. Another on-time win for Delta! That will leave us at the airport at 5:30am for a 7:34 train into Rotterdam. Assuming all goes well, I’ll be in bed before 9:00am and ready for my dinner meeting. I have never minded travel because I find it easy to occupy myself with reading, writing and watching, but unfortunately, no sleeping.