Find the Best Seat on a Flight

As someone who traveled a lot for business and now travels for personal fun and experiences, I wanted to share a website that I use when selecting a seat on any flight.

The name of the website is SeatGuru (www.seatguru.com). This website allows you to search for your flight on any airline. Once you have the flight selected, SeatGuru will tag different seats on the flight as red, yellow, or green.

You start by identifying the flight you are taking and click on View Seatmap for that flight. The plane configuration displays.

So, how do you use this graphic? If you have already selected a seat assignment, you can click on that seat to get a description from SeatGuru.

• Yellow – this indicates a regular seat for that category, however, there may be other issues to consider. For example, it might be near the lavatories’ or galley. Both of these can mean there may be noise and disruptions especially if you are trying to sleep. Another issue might be limited legroom. Sometimes there may be no floor storage if it is located at the bulkhead. At the bulkhead, you might also have your tray table in the armrest which might reduce the amount of seat space you have.
• Red – you may want to avoid these seats as SeatGuru indicates this is a bad seat. They get tagged as red because they have limited reclining, misaligned window, or the location on the plane near the galley and lavatories. There may be no floor storage if located near the bulkhead. Personal space may also be reduced. If you are in the last row, your seat may not recline.
• White – indicates this is a standard seat for that category. There will be normal leg room, you will not be adjacent to a lavatory or galley, you will be able to recline, and you will have storage underneath the seat in front of you.
• Green – these are seats with more legroom. These are generally found at the bulkhead (but these may also have other issues) and sometimes the economy row directly behind a comfort or business class section.
• SeatGuru also shows where all emergency exists are, lavatories, galleys, and closets.

I have used SeatGuru many times for my own flights. I often look at the flights available for my trip, determine the class I can afford, and then check out the available seats against what SeatGuru tells me about any remaining available seats. Try it for yourself and let me know what you think.