Travel: You Want Me to Eat THIS?

Thirty thousand feet above the Pacific, the businessman wakes from a peaceful sleep to find the flight attendant placing a glass of Dom Perignon on his tray. "How would you like your eggs, Mr. Kliman?" His eyes fall on the small and tasteful burner resting atop her cart in the aisle. A sigh of contentment. "Poached, please." Has he arrived in heaven? Or is this merely Singapore Airlines?

Thousands of miles away, on a U.S. domestic airliner, another flight attendant strides down the aisle and deposits a tiny tray of what is optimistically described as chicken Kiev. A ragged strip of...