A Comfortable International Flight No Matter Where You Sit Upgrading your overseas flight can be worth it, but if you aren't ready to pony up the money here's how to make your flight time more productive and comfortable.

I won't fly coach for overseas business travel anymore. Not even when it's packaged as "world vagabond," "intrepid class" or some other name created by crafty marketers to conjure up the image of a cost-conscious sophisticate on the move. My time is just too valuable to hit the ground staggering.

I made that pact with myself more than a decade ago and haven't broken it over a span of nearly 50 intercontinental trips, even when I'm paying the tab. Life's just too short. And a bus-seat trip to Europe, let alone Asia or Africa, is just too, too long.

You can call me elitist, but I prefer to think of it as a preventative measure: The last time I flew long-haul in the rear of the plane, I ended up at a doctor's office with a back that wouldn't straighten. My body no longer bends into the oblique configurations necessary to sleep in a confined space. What's more, it needs several days to adapt to a new time zone. Those 36-hour, three-layover itineraries that used to get me to Europe for a song were cost-effective in their day, but for me, that day has passed.