the value of "turning left"

Considering how often domestic flights are on a single-aisle plane boarded from the forward door, you're usually "turning right" no matter which class you're in. Even on long haul international flights, First Class cabins are shrinking (or vanishing altogether), and a big chunk of the Business Class seats are often to the right of the boarding door.

Honestly, I've gotten so used to having 150+ people tromp/crop-dust their way through the plane that I thought nothing of it. Then, a few days ago, I boarded my overpriced flight home from Portland and was pleasantly surprised when I had to "turn left" on this 757 to get to my Delta One seat. A few minutes after sitting down it hit me – why was I so calm and peaced out? Why was I actually smiling despite this insanely stressful month? It's because we turned left.

We could take as long as we wanted to "get settled". We could get up whenever we wanted to get things out of the overhead bin. We could easily get up and use the bathroom while the rest of the plane was boarding. Pre-departure drinks were easily distributed by the FAs because they weren't fighting through a traffic jam. No one bonked me in the head with a bag. And de-planing was also calmer than usual.

Yes, this sounds bougie, but so's this whole feckin' blog. Given how the airlines are "un-bundling" every single aspect of air travel so you can pay for only the exact features you want, it makes you really deconstruct the entire flight experience whether you want to or not. I'd never really asked myself "what's the value of a true 'turn left' experience on a plane" before? While I can't put a straight-up dollar value on it, it'll definitely be in my decision tree from this day onward. 

Sidenote: now that I'm thinking about it, I think the 'turn right' boarding process for JetBlue Mint might be the worst thing about it.

I've long been a proponent of "visualizing your travel day" before you book. In fact, that's why we chose to take this flight in the first place: it was the only direct flight that departed at a reasonable hour. We still haven't chosen our seats for our upcoming Asia flights, but looking at the China Airlines seat map, I'm now definitely going to pick something in rows 10-16 to stay "in the 'turn left' zone".