by Jessica
HowellFrequent
travelers, whether for business or pleasure, now have
a place on the web to call home. SeatGuru.com,
founded in 2001, is quickly gaining popularity as a
resource for long-legged, antsy and just plain frustrated
travelers who want to know the truth on airplane seating.
Equipped
with seat dimensions and diagrams that highlight good
seats (green), "be aware" seats (yellow) and
poor seats (red), SeatGuru points out exit rows, bathrooms
and even power port locations for over 29 airlines including
American, Delta, JetBlue and United Airlines. (If you're
wondering, "be aware yellow" means that one
seat differs from the others and may have no window,
limited legroom or another minor drawback.)
Easily
navigational, the site is constructed around a column
of large, easy-to-click tabs that list airlines alphabetically.
Choose your service, then select your aircraft from
a list of those available and you're promptly viewing
seat plans, in-flight amenities and more at the touch
of a button. Almost too easy. You'll also find pros
and cons of bulkhead seating (those seats directly behind
a bulkhead, or wall that separates first class from
coach, etc.) and on which aircrafts to try and book
this seat and which to pass.
The
perfect time to test SeatGuru came last month, before
I headed to Hawaii via an eight-hour flight departing
from Minneapolis/St. Paul. Eight hours is a long time
in the air - and I wanted to verify exact proximity
to the (most-likely) sneezing, cold-infested passenger
that I would sit next to. Twenty-one inches, if you
care to know, not nearly as bad as I expected.
If
your flight seating and SeatGuru's doesn't quite match
up, drop them a note by clicking the "submit comments"
tab. About three times a month users feedback and comments
are incorporated into the site.
If
time is not on your side and you find yourself hustling
from one terminal to the next, shuffled onto another
flight, wanting to switch seats at the last minute,
or just plain bored - you can log onto the mobile version
of the site - http://mobile.seatguru.com - that is optimized
for handheld devices like cell phones and PDAs. Although
not as detailed as the original, you'll still be able
to find equal aircraft coverage, seat maps, graphics
and color-coding, as well as pitch and width measurements.
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