Update 09-03-14: GAH! Toronto Fan Expo was a ton of fun, but the preparation, time spent there, time traveling home and recovery have and ARE costing me greatly in terms of productivity. I am frantically trying to update/backdate new comics so there are 4 a week for every week. I’m doing my best. Luckily I don’t have much travel planned for the rest of the year.
I have only experienced a full Planecouch once in my life. It was a rare and wonderful bit of magic. Upon realizing my good fortune, I actually raised all the armrests and laid down across all three seats. I was like a king in one of those big king chairs, except 50,000 feet in the sky and going like 300 miles an hour. It was some of the most baller shit I have ever been apart of. I almost had a second Planecouch once, but fate had crueler designs for me.
Calling all Whovians with holes in their ears! Just look at these Sonic Screwdriver earrings my wife made!
https://www.etsy.com/listing/200762224/doctor-who-inspired-sonic-screwdriver
Oh, yeah! The last time I went back to the States on vacation, I had that situation going and coming! A whole row to myself for a 16 hour flight. lace a couble of seatbelts around your legs and torso, and nobody bothers you while you nap. 😀
We should develop a hand signal for people who've had #planecouch so we discretely acknowledge each other in public around "the unenlightened."
I've never been so lucky. If I were, I think I'd be similarly moved to tears.
I had a #planecouch once. I was shocked because it was Sydney to Melbourne, one of the busiest flight in the world.
But the flight is 30 minutes long so you only get about 15 minutes of couch time without the seat belt.
It was still majestic.
I did a flight like that from Dallas to Houston once. No #planecouch, but the flight never actually leveled off. It went up, then it went down. 30 minutes total.
I see your Dallas to Houston, and I'll raise you Ontario (CA) to LAX. We spent more time boarding and leaving the plane. It was maybe a 15 minute flight. And it was the first of 4 flights to get to WI on very short notice.
OH GOD YES! #Planecouches are the best! A couple of years ago, I was flying to Finland and I had the bad luck to be seated between two rather rotund fellows, so I braced myself for two hours of discomfort. Only, fifteen minutes into the flight, one of the Flight Attendants came up to me, asked my name and told me to follow her. Somewhat bemused, I followed and there it was, an entire row of seats, just for me! Best. Flight. Ever!
You must build a statue of her out of pure gold in tribute to her generous deed.
I would have wept and hugged her legs in thanks, but apparently the airline frowns on that behaviour. I just giddily thanked her and sat down to watch Northern Europe fly by beneath us.
You lucky duck
The kindest thing about that is she actually made all 3 of you much more comfortable.
I had a plane couch across the Pacific from Australia to the US once, and the damn seats were so sculpted that it was more comfortable to sit in one than try to lie across the ridges in between.
I had planecouch once and only once, and it couldn't have come at a better time. I was up all night drinking in Boston and managed to catch about an hour of sleep before my 5:30AM flight so I was in that weird half-drunk/half-ready-to-be-super-hungover state. Ah, youth. I so could not do that now. I'm not sure how I did it then, but the planecouch saved my ass. That and the nicest flight attendant ever who kept refilling my water while I was passed out.
5:30 am flights were invented by the government to test for metahumans. Anyone who handles a flight that early without just falling to fucking pieces is black bagged, carted off in a van and recruited into a Jason Bourne-like assassin initiative.
If what's shown in the comic happened to me, I think I would actually move over to the window seat and offer the aisle seat to the dude sitting right behind Joel, sandwiched between two other folks. No more planecouch, but at least me and 3 other passengers get their own armrests. Everybody wins!
Have you BEEN in a modern plane? There is no armrest next to the window. It used to be the nicest spot, because you had a seat, and a window. Now you have 90% of a seat, and a window, and it sucks about as much as anywhere else in coach. :/
There's no room on #planecouch for the weak. It's every passenger for themselves!
PLOT TWIST: 7 year old triplets are assigned to the seats behind you, their 3DSes are out of power, and snacks won't be served for several hours. Their parents are all the way over in first class, drinking champagne and too absorbed watching The Real Housewives of Atlanta on their iPads to give a fuck.
You've just booked a flight ….TO HELL! BWAH HAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!
On my flight to Toronto there were two little boys in front of me, maybe 10 and 12 who COULD NOT KEEP THEIR HANDS OFF EACH OTHER. They were basically full on WWE wrestling the entire flight.
I not only had planecouch once, but I had FIRST CLASS PLANECOUCH. My flight was crazy underbooked and the woman sharing my seat was painting her TOENAILS on the flight. The flight attendant heard me ask her repeatedly not to, since it was giving me a headache, so they moved me up to a completely empty first class row.
It's the holy grail of air travel! Not just a seat in the best section of the plane, but a whole row of them to yourself!
I have a really bad reaction to people removing their shoes on planes, buses, etc. Even a sandal, covering as little as it does, is better than a completely bared foot. I would have gone past asking into telling, loudly, rather quickly. Which would have made me unpopular I'm sure.
Wait… is first class even capable of #planecouch? Arent the seats usually separated bucket seat style?
When we moved to Morocco back in 1969 our PanAm flight was so lightly loaded everybody in my family had an entire row of seats to themselves. And back then they would take the arms from between the seats and the seat bottoms were flat so my 11YO self had as close as you could get to a sleeper berth on an airplane. They were even letting people from 1st class into Economy to enjoy the space. Now the 1971 return trip was during the height of tourist season, so no beds on that flight.
Im just shocked they had armrest technology in 1969.
This happened to me ONCE in my life, and I spent the flight turning that section of the plane into a fort outta free pillows and a blanket I brought along. 40 hours playing video games and drinking cold complimentary airplane sodas in a pillow fort 30 thousand feet in the air; the Mile High Club can go suck it.
Live the dream, dude.
Dude.
You are my friggin' hero.
I want to have your babies.
"the Mile High Club can go suck it. "
I think that's part of the mile high club's mission statement.
Once flying from Japan to the U.S. with my two young sons, I was able to put my youngest on the floor for a long nap while my eldest and I shared a plane couch. It worked very well and was moderately comfortable.
If they sold this set up as an option, it would cost $10,000.
Just wanted to mention that the shading on the last two panels is excellent. Nicely done!
And here I thought getting a seat behind the bulkhead(a tall person's only friend in economy) was the height of pure luck- that's gotta be the biggest "haw-haw" you could have against the other passengers!
Reading that title "Nth Class" made me think of the Nth Metal from Hawkman. I don't know if that was intentional or not, but nicely done!
Sort of. They both, the title and the metal, derive from the same concept. "The Nth" degree of something is the highest possible degree.
"nth degree at Dictionary.com. To the utmost, as in They'd decked out the house to the nth degree. This expression comes from mathematics, where to the nth means “to any required power” ( n standing for any number). It was first recorded in 1852."