Please welcome back guest blogger, Flying With Fish!
“What seat do I want?”
What airline passenger has not thought that singular thought to themselves while booking a flight? Selecting your seat on a flight is important, especially on a long flight. As a passenger you want comfort, maybe you prefer an aisle for access or a window for a view, but you should also know if you have restricted leg room, selected a row with no window, are assigned a seat with limited recline and many other variables that go into selecting ‘the right seat.’
As a frequent flyer I often fly the same airlines, same routes, same aircraft so I know exactly what seats I want. In general I am a window person, my preference is the A-side window as I tend to lean left while sitting up and sleeping and frankly it is embarrassing to find myself slumped over on someone’s shoulder in the middle of a flight. Knowing my sleeping habits, while crammed into a 17-inch (43cm) wide seat helps me pick my seats. When flying unknown airlines or aircraft with seating configurations I am unfamiliar with I don’t rely on the airline’s seating chart to make my decision. Rather than trust the airline I turn to two resources within my iPhone.
When I have access to the internet my first stop for airline seat research is Seat Guru. Seat Guru is well-known and well-respected as a very accurate resource for more than 85 global airlines. Seat Guru’s aircraft charts provide users with detailed seating charts for approximately 500 aircraft configurations. Seat Guru’s seating guide is accessible on the iPhone, or any other mobile device at http://mobile.seatguru.com.
A great flight tracking iPhone App that integrates Seat Guru’s detailed seating charts is ‘Flight Update.’ When users search flight information within ‘Flight Update’ they can check seating configurations for specific aircraft, as well as other detailed flight data. Like accessing Seat Guru directly, ‘Flight Update’ can only provide seating information when there is access to the internet.
For those times when you do not have access to the internet, such as when you’re sitting on the plane, or traveling internationally and do not want to incur international roaming fees, CXI Gaming’s ‘Airline Seat Guide’ is an excellent resource. ‘Airline Seat Guide’ provides users with access to detailed seating charts for more then 50 global airlines and over 300 aircraft configurations. The advantage to using “Airline Seat Guide” over Seat Guru Mobile (or Flight Update with Seat Guru) is that its content can be accessed anywhere at any time, without the need to have internet access.
Both Seat Guru and Airline Seat Guide offer users colour coded designations to indicate good seats, bad seats, standard seats, ‘iffy’ seats, seats with mixed reviews, seats with power ports, emergency exit seat, etc etc etc. There are numerous other tid-bits of information that I find invaluable such as seat width and pitch, location of lavatories, seats with video-boxes under them, location of overhead video monitors, type of in-seat power (AC, DC, emPower).
Any traveller headed out on a trip travelling anywhere should know the seats they are selecting. Not all seats are created equal and using Seat Guru and Airline Seat Expert can mean the difference between tolerating your seat for a few hours or detesting your seat for a few hours.
For more information travelling smarter and with less stress feel free to visit Flying With Fish at www.flyingwithfish.com
Happy Flying!
Steven Frischling
Founder The Travel Strategist & Flying With Fish
Web: www.thetravelstrategist.com
Blog: www.flyingwithfish.com
Twit: www.twitter.com/flyingwithfish
Always use Seat Guru and Seat Expert but was unaware of the iPhone app. Thanks for the heads up.