I once got bumped up to Business Class and the experience sorely tempted me to spend the extra money in the future. It had nothing to do with smugness and everything to do with a seat that isn't painfully small, enough legroom to avoid being horribly cramped, ability to recline more than five degrees, and food that didn't make me want to vomit in terror.

All that you said, and also that the staff is much more willing to cater to your needs.

It's not willingness. Coach can be just as demanding but F and J are demanding more often.

Most of the coach passengers are just glad to be onboard, like they didn't think they'd get in. And they don't fly frequently enough to know what to ask for. The F and J are usually frequent fliers, know exactly what they are entitled to and ask for every time.

I'm prepared to admit that I am not motivated by this.

To me it sounds far more pleasant to sit there outside reading while everyone else has to queue up, then walk in just before take-off to get into my comfortable first class seat, without being jostled by the entire rest of the plane's passenger complement slowly trudging past me and impinging on my personal space.

Perhaps I'm weird.

Alternatively you could walk in as soon as boarding starts, sit down and start reading, and not have to worry about looking up every few minutes to see whether it's your turn to board yet.

That's where the people-walking-by-jostling-me bit comes in as a motivator for staying out.

Besides, why look up when they're announcing things over the P.A.?

You don't have to board immediately when they call first class. You can wait until everybody else has boarded.

That's true... but if I board later then I generally have to wait in the line up to the plane, unless I'm really cutting it close.

Smugness isn't the word. It's more about having the whole experience be less stressful. I just made elite status for the first time, and being able to skip the lines, get my choice of seat (even in economy) makes a huge psychological difference.

I can settle into my seat, and do some work before the door closes, or even fall asleep before the wheels leave the ground.

Also, lounge access. Lounges make air travel civilized, like staying at a nice hotel (SFO international British Airways lounge excepted— it feels like being at a Holiday Inn Express).

(I'll fly 75k miles this year. AA PLT/OW Emerald, and I fly almost exclusively CX/KA/AA.)

Not to diverge too much from the topic. At JFK, the first class passengers have a priority queue through the security system as well. I flew through JFK once on a Holiday (4th of July) and TSA was so understaffed that they barely had enough staff to handle the 1st class passengers that were arriving.

So as if waiting in security lines were not enough, imagine waiting in a security line that was actually getting longer as you just sat there holding your bags watching first class after first class passenger go through and everyone else just standing there.

I just couldn't understand why the TSA would even care about the class status an airline gives to its passengers, I don't know any other airports that do this.

I've seen that in several airports, and it isn't the TSA that cares. The airport owners will have done deals with the airlines, and the TSA's job isn't to decide who goes in what order, it's to make sure that whoever goes through isn't breaking any laws. So if the airport says first class passengers go first, that's who the TSA check first.