I knew it!

One time flying to Japan, I happened to luck out and get upgraded to the exit row. Normally I like to get the aisle seat in the center section in the very last row of economy. I find that the leg room in economy isn’t actually that bad IF, and only if, I don’t put anything under the seat in front of me. I usually try to check absolutely everything except one computer bag, and then put that in the overhead. Works great.

The good part about the last row is, usually it’s completely empty. Someone is not going to show up for the flight, and the poor people who got the center seats in the last row are going to move up. That leaves me with the whole row to myself. It’s even better than an “economy plus” seat when everything works out. Even if the overhead is full, I can put my bag under the seat in front of the empty adjacent seat and just enjoy the foot room and elbow room. Some of the planes I can even put the armrests up and have the whole row as a cot. Boom.

Anyway, this time I had accumulated enough flight miles to be a Premium Silver member or whatever-the-F. So when the plane wasn’t full, they offered me the exit row. It was ok, I guess. The drawback was it was at the forward end of the economy cabin, so right next to the lavatory where everyone stood around waiting for their turn to pee. I’m probably not going to take that deal again over an empty row.

The other thing it was next to, was a little closet door which I initially thought was a gear locker for the crew. Seemed kind of big, like walk-in storeroom size, because I kept seeing flight attendants open the door, go inside and close the door after them. And I’d see them coming out and closing the door after them. I wasn’t watching enough to notice how long they were in there.

Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw just as the door was closing, someone’s feet climbing a ladder in there. And looking at the ceiling of the plane, which is kind of a wavy ‘M’ shape… hey, there’s a LOT of space up there between the ceiling and the round hull that’s not accounted for by the cargo containers.

So I knew there must be something like this up there, and always wanted to see what it looked like. I wonder if you could even pay enough money to fly the whole trip in the crew’s bunkroom instead of a normal seat.