Mon, Oct 18, 2004
Seatguru.Com - For Airline Travelers
by ANN Senior Correspondent Kevin R.C. "Hognose" O'Brien
If you travel a lot, but don't often take the same trip on the
same airline you might never figure out what's a good seat or a bad
seat. Nowadays, most lines let you change your seat assignment
online or at a kiosk in the airport. But which seats are good and
which are bummers?
What's worse, is that the seat I might like might not suit you.
Legroom is not a problem for me (I can duck under mushrooms when it
rains), but I need stowage for a bag of expensive electronics and
cameras that I dare not check. Likewise, if you're 6' 4" you aren't
going to be putting a gear bag under the seat in front of you --
you'll be lucky if your feet fit. ("I'm sorry, sir, your feet have
to fit completely under the seat in front of you, or in the
overhead compartment. But I would be glad to check them for
you....") Well, I can laugh at that because I'm not 6'4".
So I was glad when a friend tipped me to SeatGuru.com. For most
domestic airlines, and a few internationals, SeatGuru gives you a
map of the plane's seats with a color coding as to what the best,
and the worst, seats in the house are. Pay particular attention to
yellow- or yellow-and-green coded seats, as there are details there
that are likely to be a deal breaker for some passengers and a deal
maker for others.
Which seats let you stretch out? Where is there a laptop power
plug? Can you see the in-flight movie, if any? Are you near the
bassinet (a key question for those traveling with babies, and
trying to travel without)? SeatGuru.com as a lot of the
answers.
When more information about a particular seat is needed, simply
mousing over the seat gives you whatever info SeatGuru has. It's a
good use of JavaScript to convey information -- for a change. In
fact the whole site is a good idea: a kind of decentralized (it
works on reader input) reputation manager for airline seats. Sweet.
It's not perfect (Southwest is one of the airline omissions) but it
sure beats what the airline tells you: "window" or "aisle."
We're not getting a dime from this guy, we just think he has a
clever idea; we'll use it, why keep it to ourselves?
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