Getting the Best Seat on the Airplane - It's a Loooong Flight, Folks

Folks, if you enjoy our blog and end up using Overseas Adventure Travel (OAT) for any future trips of your own, please use our names - Sheila and Terry Calhoun - when you sign up. That will give us a little bit of credit with OAT for a future trip . . . and get you $100 off of your first trip with OAT. You will also need this number: 1027952. Thanks.

One of the coolest things I have found out about in preparation for this trip is that there are a number of websites that specialize in letting travelers (That's us!) learn ahead of time, without experiencing an around-the-world flight in a cramped seat, which are the best seats on airplanes (and which are the worst). See the image at left which is exemplary of the ones you can find for each aircraft, as flown by each airline.

The one we used is called Seat Guru. Since we are flying Northwest Airlines (NWA) on a Boeing 747-400, we learned that seats 63 & 64 A-C, despite being near the back of the plane, have no "neighbors." That's right, Sheila and I are flying for 17.5 hours to Shanghai without having to lean up against anyone other than ourselves.

You can find our on your airline reservation what kind of plane you are on, and Seat Guru will show you a diagram of every seat with "desirable" and "avoid at all costs" seats clearly and colorfully marked.

In the case of NWA, you can begin reserving seats 90 days before the flight takes off. So, yesterday I got up early, went to the airline site, and got us seats 64 A-C all the way to Shanghai. In about a month, I'll do the same thing to ensure good seats on our return flights.