(Departures) -- When San Francisco law firm operations director Jeffrey Lais was due for a well-earned vacation, he booked himself a first-class ticket to Munich on Lufthansa. Once aboard the German carrier's A346, he was led to his first-class suite, where a spacious leather seat and ottoman ran the length of four airplane windows and various compartments overflowed with noise-canceling headphones, menus, pajamas and slippers. After a dinner of caviar, prawn confit, duck breast and an assortment of French cheeses, a flight attendant converted Lais's seat into a mattress-topped flatbed—complete with duvet and giant pillows—and showed him how to seal his seat from view with a privacy screen for the rest of the 12-hour flight.
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As airlines stave off bankruptcy, there seems to be a shield around the almighty first class
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First class on Swiss offers a spacious executive desk that converts to a dining table
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The Dubai-based carrier Emirates offer showers for first-class passengers
@placeholder recently trumped the industry's seat-to-flatbed race by halving the number of first-class suites aboard its 747s and giving each a seat and a bed.