First-class family's 16-hour flight in economy to Singapore's Changi Airport
This week, Reagan is staying with her mom in Denver for school while the rest of us head out on our longest, farthest, and most adventurous trip so far. We’re about to spend 3 weeks exploring Singapore and the islands of the Philippines. This trip will mark the 12th and 13th countries and the 3rd continent we’ve hit since 2020.
As you can imagine, our constant travels build up a lot of flight miles. So many in fact that we’ve achieved Premier 1k status with United Airlines. And that means we get upgraded constantly. Especially when we fly overseas, it’s nice to get some real sleep in their Polaris pods with lie-flat beds so that we arrive relatively refreshed and with minimal jet lag. And on a 16-hour flight from San Francisco to Singapore, like the one we’re taking today, that’s especially important.
However, due to some… miscalculations when we booked this trip, we’re finding ourselves in the unfortunate position of sitting in economy for this flight.
Now, before you judge us as privileged a-holes complaining about taking an incredible trip across the world and having to sit in the same seats that 9 out of 10 people do without complaining, let me clear something up.
First of all, we had never flown anything but economy until a few years ago. And we’ve still never purchased a first-class ticket. Ever. We just don’t feel like it’s a good use of our money.
Second, while our entire family does prefer flying in the upgraded cabins, Erin and the kids will do just fine in economy on this flight. Phil, on the other hand, expects his experience to be somewhere between miserable and excruciating. That’s because he ruptured a disk during a suboptimal skydiving landing more than a decade ago, had surgery to fix it, and has had lower back issues ever since. Sitting for more than 30 minutes at a time is very uncomfortable for him—and airplane seats are the worst. The last time we flew economy back from Europe, it was bad enough that he told Erin he couldn’t fly overseas without lie-flat seats ever again… and that flight was about 8 hours shorter than today’s.
So, we’re going to do everything we can—both physically and mentally—to be successful and positive on this journey, but it’s very possible that you’re going to witness a major breakdown by the end of this episode.
Contents:
0:00 Introduction
2:15 Heading to Denver International Airport
3:43 Heading Back Home
4:23 Heading Back to DIA and Flying to SFO
5:53 Flying SFO to Singapore
11:30 Arriving at Changi Airport
12:44 Visiting Jewel
