Frankfurt and the Air China 747-8

In this video Trek Trendy flies two first class cabins that, he says, you hear almost nothing about, and his dad comes along for the trip. The journey starts in Frankfurt, where Air China is one of the few airlines still flying passengers on the Boeing 747. Check-in and priority security go quickly, but there is no fast track at passport control and the wait takes around 45 minutes. Air China first class passengers get access to the Lufthansa first class lounge, where every guest receives one of the Lufthansa rubber ducks. At gate B46 the 747-8 is waiting on its first day back in Frankfurt. He calls the Queen of the Skies an increasingly rare sight, with only Lufthansa, Korean Air and Air China still flying it.

The Forbidden Pavilion

The first class cabin is not upstairs or in the nose but on the main deck behind business class, and it is called the Forbidden Pavilion. It has 12 suites in a 1-2-1 layout, and on this flight he and his dad are the only passengers in the cabin. The suites have no doors, but the partitions give privacy, and each one has a 26 inch screen, noise cancelling headphones and a personal wardrobe. The flight to Beijing covers around 5,000 miles in roughly 10 hours at a cruising altitude of 38,000 feet. The meal starts with canapes and champagne, followed by soup, a main course of shrimp balls and beef in oyster sauce, and a range of desserts. He also shows the upper deck with 30 business class seats in a 2-2 layout, and mentions a second business class section in the nose. After a night in the flat bed he wakes up with the aircraft already on final approach into Beijing.

Bullet train and China Eastern 777 first class

From Beijing the pair take a high speed train from Beijing South to Shanghai, just over 800 miles in around four and a half hours at more than 200 miles per hour. The second flight leaves from Terminal 1 at Shanghai Pudong on an 11 year old China Eastern Boeing 777-300ER to London, a trip of around 12 hours and 5,700 miles. The first class cabin has six suites in two rows, with a bar between the window suites in the first row, and again they have the cabin to themselves. Each seat offers around 80 inches of pitch and is almost 27 inches wide, and two sliding doors close for extra privacy. The crew set up the centre suites so father and son can dine together at 38,000 feet. He finds the headphones, the slow entertainment system and the amenity kit disappointing for first class. The Air China 747 first class ticket cost him $6,220 per person, with a feeder flight from Amsterdam that cut the fare by half. The train came to $433 per person and China Eastern to just under $5,000 with a connection to Berlin, for a total of $11,600 per person.