There's something incredibly thrilling about airplanes. When you're 33,000 feet in the air, you're neither here nor there. Reality is suspended, and anything goes. There's a very good reason why the Mile High Club has so many members, as this woman found out. Who said air travel was no longer glamorous, exciting, and sexy? You hear about people being upgraded to first class all the time, but you never think it'll happen to you. Not to an ordinary woman like me. But it did happen to me, and it turned out to be a very memorable journey indeed.

I was flying from Edinburgh to London for a meeting. Any thoughts I might have had about glamorous business travel were dashed when my boss handed me an economy ticket, saying it wasn't worth paying extra for an hourlong domestic flight. When I arrived at the airport early in the morning and handed my passport and confirmation number to the girl behind the desk, her face fell.

"I'm so sorry, but this flight is overbooked," she said. She must have registered the mild panic that was showing on my own face; I had to make this meeting. But before I could even start to plead and protest, she began tapping away frantically on her keyboard.

"Oh!" Her expression brightened. "Actually, this is your lucky day! We've got a spare seat in first, so we can upgrade you."

Then she handed me a shiny boarding pass and pointed me toward the fast-track security gate. I sashayed through in under a minute, hoping I looked like I belonged in first class. I was glad that the nature of my meeting demanded I wear a suit that day. The security guard who checked my pass directed me to the executive lounge, which was subtly signposted behind a bar. I stepped through a frosted-glass door and into another world. A uniformed bartender squeezing oranges for juice looked up and immediately offered me freshly ground coffee. Free newspapers were strewn across designer glass tables, and on leather sofas that would have looked more at home in a five-star hotel lobby sat well-dressed, glamorous people passing time before their flights. I looked at them in awe. My new companions all radiated money, power, and, of course, sex, and here I was, right among them.