These two words can help get you an airline upgrade over the phone
British author and frequent flier Tilly Bagshawe, who lives with her family in California, offers her top tips to make your foreign travels more comfortable
British writer Tilly Bagshawe is The New York Times bestselling author of more than a dozen novels. Her first, Adored, was a Jackie Collins-style blockbusting bodice-ripper, and she has since gone on to pen several page-turning hits in the same style.
She has also written numerous officially sanctioned novels in the style of Sidney Sheldon.
Her latest book is the first in a murder mystery series set in her beloved British countryside: Murder at the Mill, published by Trapeze, which Bagshawe wrote under her pen name, M.B. Shaw.
A long-time expat, Bagshawe estimates that she flies around 100,000 miles (160,000 kilometres) per year as she shuttles between the UK and her base in Los Angeles, where she lives with husband Robin Nydes and four children.
Her carrier of choice is Virgin Atlantic.
“I’m quite a fearful flier and I often think, when I get on a plane, ‘Are these the people I want to die with in a plume of smoke’?” she laughs.
“And the cabin crew are so nice, always laughing. It has the best entertainment system, especially children, and they bring fab ice lollies in the middle of the flight, which is one of my children’s favourite things.”
Here Bagshawe offers some tips for making your travelling as comfortable as possible.