As a Ph.D. student from a (pretty rich!) European research group, I'm about to attend a conference in New Zealand. The second leg of a potential flight takes 16 hours to reach the destination, and it seems to be the hell of discomfort to spend all that time on an economy seat (I once had a 10-hour-flight experience, and I was in trouble because of my relatively long legs despite time-to-time walks in the plane's aisle). The cost of a business seat is around 4 times the cost of an economy one, something around 3500 Euros. Thus, I'm just wondering how reasonable the request to have such a seat is.
PS. I do know that a first-hand approach is actually asking my supervisor what he thinks about it. But I'd rather not ask such a question if it would sound silly and unreasonable.
Any experiences and thoughts (particularly from those who had already been involved in any side of such a situation) are welcome!