This is the Atlantic with attitude. Upper class Brits may be stuffy and stuck up but Virgin’s Upper Class service is laid back, sassy, and yes, cheeky. Yet it yields to none on luxury, service and diversions—including the rarest of all commodities on overseas flights—sleep.

A young Virgin (employee) escorts me from the check-in counter to Virgin’s swanky first- class San Francisco clubhouse. The chaos of the airport fades as I enter a peacock-blue and frosted glass world sporting smashing views of San Francisco. Large red easy chairs complete with data ports are peopled with chatters, workers and callers-home. One couple sits at the bar sipping martinis. At the room’s far end, one person sleeps on a day bed and another dreamily watches a five-screen video, all showing the same tape of rushing water—curiously calming.

I graze through the café’s California-Europe fusion menu, sampling the pâté, a fresh tomato salad, and crab sushi rolls. The transatlantic news provides the entertainment with The San Francisco Chronicle reporting on bawdy seahorses proliferating at the Monterey Bay Aquarium and The Times of London berating a cabinet level minister who floored a constituent in an egg-throwing fracas. All too soon, another young Virgin (employee) escorts me to the plane for the nine-and-a-half-hour overnight flight to London.

Settling into my multi-plex seat, I experiment with its moves and poke through a bag of amenities—wake-up cosmetics, sleep aids and note taking items. Red-skirted, white-shirted stewardi inquire: Drinks? Food? Magazines? Movies? Sleep? Manicure? Massage?

Upper Class passengers eat when they want, watch movies when they want and yes! yes! sleep when they want. Two women in front of me change immediately into their Virgin-supplied cozies—ultra soft warm-up suits—whereupon one stretches out to watch a movie and the other ambitiously attacks a pile of work. The English businessman next to me—still a good 18 inches away—nibbles marinated olives as he drinks his wine and chuckles over travel writer Bill Bryson’s new book.

My dinner starts with Virgin’s "plane" salad of baby lettuce with English asparagus and a lemon-olive oil dressing. Skipping the lamb cutlets in filo pastry, I try the "Bong-Bong Chicken" with a yummy chili-sesame-peanut sauce and fragrant jasmine rice. The "Naughty but Nice Ginger Ice Cream" puts me in the mood for sleep.

"Fetching" exclaims my seatmate as I return in my cozies. My seat glides to the near horizontal, I pull up the duvet, puff up the jumbo (for an airplane) pillow and read by my bedside light. Then, earplugs and cushy eye mask in place, I conk out. The escalating activity level in the cabin as we near London wakes me up—a divine five hours later. Most of my fellow campers look like they caught 40 winks as well. Choosing a breakfast worthy of England—tea, crumpets, jam and fruit—I pass on the even more British bacon butty and pap. A wash-up, a splash of Virgin’s wake-up elixir and a neck and shoulder massage and I’m ready to greet the London morning.

Three weeks later, I arrive at London’s Heathrow early for my late morning flight. I want my nails to dry before I board the plane. Virgin’s Heathrow clubhouse fronts for a spa. Hair styling, massage, facials, and manicures—complimentary to Upper Class passengers—adjoin the clubby lounge with food, drinks, work stations and showers. Nails dry and shoes polished, I dip into the breakfast buffet and browse the world news in papers from Singapore to Saskatchewan. I get a lesson in how to use the plexi-seat—oh, that’s how the back pillow blows up—and chuckle at the hand knit shadow puppets gracing the walls.

The mood on the daytime flight is quite different than the overnight flight; the focus now is on entertainment rather than peace and quiet. The cocktail lounge buzzes, the food becomes theater, everyone goes in for a massage or manicure and I finally figure out which of the 40 available movies or programs I want to watch on my personal monitor. By the end of the year, Virgin says we’ll even be able to surf the web.

I break for a snack—or lunch, or another breakfast—I’ve lost track. The stand-out item is Mrs. Bell’s Blue Cheese, an English pasteurized Roquefort made from sheep’s milk. Its creamy sharp taste is excellent with the walnut bread and mango chutney. One small glitch needs pointing out: the menu states, "Our sincere apologies if the last portion of your choice has been eaten, as the captain won’t stop off to pick up any more." Oh well.

I also have a complaint. My landlord won’t take credit cards so I may have to fly back with the hoi polloi again to earn my next upgrade.