16 JUNE 2007, Page 46

Flatlining

Peter Grogan tests out the new affordable business-class airlines The New York to London airline route is the most profitable in the world, and the most jealously fought over in terms of competition. The result is that, despite Gordon's best efforts, it's never been cheaper to get across the pond. With Ryanair threatening to offer tickets to the US from £7 next year, fares are getting almost too cheap. Increasingly, people who wouldn't have dreamt of travelling businessclass a few years ago find they can afford to pay more for a more comfortable ride, especially when the trip is for only a few days and it's important to arrive as fresh as possible.

Since January a new British airline called Silverjet has been taking further chunks out of that old chestnut about 'turning left' when you board an aeroplane. This is because it has only business-class seats — 100 of them on a 767 that would carry 300 in steerage — so it doesn't matter which way you turn. They're competing with two similar American airlines, Maxjet and Eos, which both started in late 2005, and also with 'premium economy' on BA and Virgin, where you get the comfy chair but economy-class service.

It's 30 years since Lorraine Chase did for Luton what Peter HaM is doing for the concept of probity, and much has changed at the airport since she denied having been 'wafted in from paradise'. Silverjet has its own terminal and lounge with direct access to the tarmac, which means you can check in just 30 minutes before departure if you're only taking hand baggage — and you have nerves of steel.

Conditions at the Black Hole of Gatwick on Easter Saturday have made me reconsider airport lounges as useful refuges from the mêlée. They're also a good place to dump your stuff so you can shop unencumbered — insofar as there are any thieves about, they're more likely to be operating at the corporate level than at the bag-snatching one.

Much of the furniture in the Maxjet lounge at Stansted is disconcertingly wobbly, bespeaking flat-pack origins, whereas at JFK Eos has use of the Emirates lounge, an oasis of calm restfulness. I'd quite like to live in it.

Everybody has a 'CrackBerry' and a laptop these days — everybody except me, that is, so the absence of any PCs in the Silverjet lounge seems an oversight. There's no duty-free outbound either, but there is lots of retro, aviator bric-a-brac and plenty of Pol Roger. Lorraine has long left the building, of course, but she'd have got on well with Silverjet's passengers — I wonder if she might have suggested renaming it `Diamondgeezerjef If a plane, like a ship, is a 'she', it would be polite to refer to Maxjet's planes as being 'd'un certain age'. Although the comfortable seats recline a long way, they're not 'fully flat beds' and the good-value fares reflect this.

Eos has only 48 seats on its 757 aircraft (there are three flights per day) so you get lots of space. Obviously, it's more expensive, with prices comparable to Virgin's 'Upper Class' and BA's business class.

You don't get the lovely massage that Virgin offers, but when the nice lady made up my bed, I asked her if I'd get a bedtime story. 'Sure,' she said, 'what book did you bring?' As I had only Lolita, I thought it best to demur.

It's all quite luxurious and they have great Bose noise-cancelling headphones, but it's important to maintain perspective and remember that normally when you go to bed in a room with 47 people you don't know, it's because you're in a dosshouse.

At 30,000 feet it's all about the little details. Personally, I don't give a monkey's if my 'warm nuts' are, in fact, 'cold nuts', but the loos on Maxjet and Eos are, frankly, bog-standard. Silverjet, cleverly, have a women-only loo in acknowledgement of our different plumbing systems. For the chaps, it only takes a bit of turbulence and `Wa-hey!' — the place is a mess.

They also have enthusiastic young staff who have the esprit de corps that Virgin cultivates and that BA seems determined to extinguish. The food is as good as can reasonably be expected — the Caprice advises them — and they claim to be the first 'carbon-neutral' airline.

But be your business-class bed ever so flat (Silverjet's are best described as being in the 'burial-at-sea' position), for my money there is none flatter than the one in my bedroom. To this end, coming back from New York, rather than take any overnight 'red-eye', I'll get up at 6 a.m. and catch the daytime flight in economy on Kazakhstan Airways with Borat — chickens and all — and get home to that bed of mine the same day.

SILVERJET Tel: 0871 7008520, www.flysilverjet.com Return fares from £999 including taxes EOS AIRLINES Tel: 0808 2348759, www.eosairlines.com Return fares from £1,765 including taxes MAXJET Tel: 0800 0234300, www.maxjet.com Return fares from £854 including taxes