Qantas Business Class — SYD to LHR

I was in Sydney for a food festival and faced the choice of flying home to Mumbai via Singapore or taking the Qantas direct to London and connecting onward. I chose London and it was one of the better decisions I've made. Qantas business class on the 787 Dreamliner from Sydney to Heathrow is twenty-two hours and fifteen minutes — the longest scheduled flight I've ever taken — but the forward-facing flat bed and the Rockpool-designed menu made it tolerable in a way almost no other airline could manage at that length. The cabin has pods that alternate between aisle and window; I had 14A with the direct window and the view over Central Australia at dawn, when the red desert goes almost orange, was worth booking for alone. The sleep was genuine — I got six hours straight — and the pasta at the midway meal was better than most pasta I've eaten on the ground. The service crew on Qantas longhaul is consistently the friendliest in the world, not in a performed way but in an actual way.