Seat Guru

Have you ever gotten on a long-haul flight only to find there is no power outlet?  Have you ever gotten to your “window” seat, but it didn’t actually have a window?  When booking a plane ticket there are many factors that can affect your experience, and seat choice is one of them.  I never really bothered looking at seat amenities when I was flying domestic, I mean for a couple of hours I can just take a nap and I’m happy.  When the Boeing Max debacle occurred and planes were being swapped out, we were booked on a trip to Hawaii, and found that the longest flight which was over 7 hours did not have in-flight entertainment, nor did it have a power outlet.  I don’t know about you, but on flights over 5 hours I start getting antsy and need something to do – and my phone battery doesn’t last 7 hours, nor do I have any movies downloaded to watch if it did.  That was a painful lesson and following that flight we started using Seatguru.com. 

Once you access Seatguru you are asked to enter your airline, the date you are flying and your flight number.  If you don’t have the flight number available, you can also enter the cities you are flying to and from instead.  Seatguru will then bring up a floorplan for the airplane that you will be flying on, and you can click on each seat to see the following information:

Class of Service:  Is it economy, economy plus, business or first class

Power: Are there outlets or USB ports in that seat

Entertainment:  Is there in-flight entertainment?  If so, is it On-Demand, DirecTV etc.

The top of the page will also have a chart showing the width (how much room from armrest to arm rest) and pitch (the distance between one point on a seat and the same point on the seat in front of it).  In both cases bigger is better. 

The seats will also be color-coded with the following designations:

White: Standard Seat

Green: Good Seat

Yellow: Beware, read the comments

Red: Bad Seat

Yellow and Green stripes: Mixed review

When I click one of the red seats on my flight to London for example, I get the following, “Seat 38E is the last row on the plane so there is limited recline.  The seat width has been reduced by 1 inch due to the curvature of the plane, the location near the lavatories may be bothersome.”  When you’re stuck on a plane for 9 hours every inch counts, and I would know to avoid that seat. When I click on another red seat I get, “This is a standard Economy Class seat that is missing a window.”  This might be a bummer if you’re taking junior on his first flight and he can’t even look out the window.

Other information on the seat description is whether it’s an exit row (these can only be used by people 15 years of age or older who have full mobility and are physically able and willing to operate the emergency equipment).  It will also tell you whether it’s a bulkhead seat.  Bulkheads have a dividing wall in front of them which can be more or less legroom depending on the configuration, and there is nowhere to put your personal bag so it will have to go in the overhead bin. 

There are also comparison charts on the site where you can compare this same information across all airlines.  Seat pitch in Economy can range from 28 to 37 inches depending on the carrier or even within the same airline.  For example, on United some planes have a 31-inch pitch while others have a 37-inch pitch.  I’d definitely go for that extra legroom when making my choice.

This information is especially useful when comparing business or first-class seats.  If you’re going to spend that many miles, you want to make sure you get the best bang for your buck.  On our next London flight there are five rows of first-class seats, the two back left seats are marked in red.  When I click on them it tells me that, “Seat 5B is a first-class seat that does not recline, the location near the lavatories may be bothersome.”  Can you imagine finally flying first class for the first time and getting the one seat that does not recline?!

When booking flights sometimes there are multiple options for flights to a certain destination in the same price range.   Use Seatguru to help you choose the right one!