How to Get a Decent Airline Seat on Your Next Business Trip

Chris Bjorklund: You’re listening to the AllBusiness podcast. I’m Chris Bjorklund. If you’re getting this through iTunes and RSS feed or an online streaming media player, you can hear interviews with other experts at AllBusiness.com.

Bjorklund: You want to make sure you get a decent airline seat the next time you go on a business trip. Ken Walker knows a lot of the tricks for booking the best seat because he’s a traveling technical trainer for a large software company. He’s been to all 50 states and 19 foreign countries and he’s our very own business travel blogger at AllBusiness. Ken, you’ve traveled all over the United States, in fact, all over the world and you have probably had quite a few nightmare experiences on airplanes, some really bad seats too?

Ken Walker: Absolutely, without a doubt.

Bjorklund: Can you tell us about the very worst seat that you ever sat in for a long flight?

Walker: Sure. I’ll never forget it. I was scheduled to come home from Gatwick Airport in London and I thought I was being proactive about this whole deal. I actually went online and took a look at the online seating map and I noticed that there was a bulkhead row open. This was a wide body, it was DC-10 so it was two seats, five seats in the middle and then two seats on the end. And I noticed there was a window seat on the bulkhead, which meant an acre of legroom and I couldn’t imagine why no one would pick this seat. So I picked it and I felt very fortunate. When I got to the airplane and I looked at my seat, everything drained out of me and I’m sure I turned white as a sheet. That’s where they keep one of three or four life rafts that inflate when, you know, if you have a water landing--they’ve got to dump this thing and inflate it. Compressed, it’s as big as a 400-pound lead weight. It was just huge and it’s in the door and it encroaches over about 90 percent of the front of the chair. I had to kind of pretzel myself just to squirt in sideways and sit down and then both of my knees pushed up against it. I couldn’t even extend my legs. There were 6 feet of empty space on the other side of this protrusion from the door and I couldn’t take advantage of any of it. I was squished in there like a pretzel for seven and a half hours.

Bjorklund: Why would other people know about this and you wouldn’t?

Walker: Well, that’s what I asked myself. Why? There’s got to be a better way and that’s when I found SeatGuru.com. I’m weird about airplane seats. My wife gives me trouble it. She says, “I’ve never seen anyone obsessed over a seat like you.” But it’s really honestly one of the only things that you can control when you’re traveling by air. Everything else, from the schedule, the arrival time, the overhead luggage space--everything else is out of your control. But you can pick a seat. So now I’ve started going to this website and what SeatGuru.com does, it asks you what airline you’re flying and then you pick it and it lifts all of the available aircraft that that airline offers. You look at your ticket and you find the equipment code and there it is right there. Airbus 310 Model 2. So you pick it and it has a seat map just like the one you get from your air carrier’s website but there’s a lot more detail here. You can click on every single seat and what comes up is a paragraph that describes that particular seat and you’d be surprised at the amount of information they have. They’ll tell you the pitch, how many inches of leg room, how this one is close to an exit-route door, it’s very much colder than the other seats on the plane. They will tell you which seat the overhead bins above are filled with emergency equipment like oxygen tanks and which seats have extra space, extra room for luggage, extra this, extra that. It’s really pretty spectacular. They have all the regional jump jets in there and you’d be surprised just how crummy a good-looking seat can be.

Bjorklund: Well before we talk a little more about SeatGuru.com, I think almost everyone who’s been in a plane has had a terrible seat at one time or another so we sent out our AllBusiness reporter, Paul Kilduff, to the airport to ask travelers for their worst seat stories.

Kilduff: What was the worst experience you ever had as far as seating on an airplane?

Female Speaker 1: I was seated by the latrines and there were about eight babies still in diapers aboard and the parents had changed their diapers, all of them, at least once within the first hour, so it was delightful.

Kilduff: What do you do in a situation like that?

Female Speaker 1: I was stuck here. There was nothing that could be done. I mean, every time the doors would open to the latrine, everybody in the first back three aisles would just cover their faces.

Kilduff: You ever had a nightmare seating situation on an airplane?

Female Speaker 2: One time on a cross-country flight to Washington, DC, I sat--the seats were comfortable for me because I’m small--between two big men. They weren’t overweight. They were just like 6-foot-4 and they got to the seat before I did so they got the armrest. So I had to fly with my arms crossed over my chest like I was in coffin all the way.

Kilduff: Do you have any secrets as far as getting the best seat on an airplane?

Male Speaker 1: I generally fly United because they offer the economy-plus seating, which offers greater leg room.

Kilduff: The economy-plus from United, is it that much more room?

Male Speaker 1: Maybe it’s just perception but they say 5 extra inches. I’d really hate to see the regular seat and what it is. Those aren’t that much.

Kilduff: When they tell yo, you’re going to be on a DC-9, does that mean anything to you in terms of the configuration of the seats?

Male Speaker 2: I just know that they’ve got something called the “pitchers” between seats. They set the pitch and it could be anywhere from about 29 to 39 inches and Air Canada’s toward the 29. The seats are all on rails so they can adjust the thing very accurately.

Kilduff: So you know about the pitch.

Male Speaker 2: Yeah.

Kilduff: How’d you find that out?

Male Speaker 2: I invested in an airline.

Bjorklund: Ken, the pitch? Who does know about the pitch? Anybody you travel with?

Walker: I happen to know about pitch because I’m weird and I study things like that. Sometimes I think it’s a racket. What they’re doing--and I think one of the people interviewed mentioned United. Northwest does it, most of the carriers do it. They have this premium-choice seating area. It’s most of the seats in the front of the main cabin and what they advertise is greater pitch and greater width. Some of them have greater width. All it really is is the angle of your body in the chair with respect to the seat that’s in front of you. Some of them you sit more straight up and down and some of them you get to lean back a little bit. What greater pitch really translates to, to a business traveler, is how much room you have to open the lid on your laptop. Two or 3 inches makes all the difference in the world if you’re trying to do some work on your computer on the plane. And if you’re too close to the person up front of you, your physical body might be comfortable but if you don’t have enough space or pitch in between you and the seat that’s right there in front, you can’t open your laptop. You can’t really do any work.

Bjorklund: You can’t work.

Walker: Yeah.

Bjorklund: What about the armrest issue brought up by the gal out at the airport?

Walker: You know, for me, there’s a couple of things here I can offer a tip. Number one, if you’re on the aisle the arm rest that faces the aisle on most airplanes, believe it or not, that armrest flips up. There’s a button up underneath there and if you ask the flight attendant, she’ll be happy to show you where it is. There’s a button way back underneath that if you push it, you can flip that armrest up and if you’re on the aisle, that gives you that extra two or three inches to skooch away from the armrest in the middle.

Bjorklund: No kidding!

Walker: I do that and it gives the guy in the middle some ray of hope...

Bjorklund: Yeah.

Walker: ...to brighten his day. And I’m not a small guy. I’m pushing 250 pounds. Usually the bigger guy wins. I mean...

Bjorklund: Yeah, I was going to say, guys always win with me.

Walker: Well, and what’s a smaller-statured guy or a thin woman supposed to do? I mean, she’s not going to assert her right to half of an armrest if she’s next to a 300-pound guy. I’m trying to think of the last time I got stuck in the middle. If I’m ever shoulder-to-shoulder with another big guy, we just sort of subconsciously--somebody will recline an extra 2 inches or sit forward an extra 2 inches and that’ll move your elbows forward or back to where you can both use the same amount of the same armrest. It’s just that one of you is a little bit forward of the other one. That tends to help but I always, being a bigger guy, I always shoot for the aisle and then I can pop that aisle armrest up and I’ve got some extra room there.

Bjorklund: Well this show is about how to find decent airline seats and you’re listening to an AllBusiness podcast with Ken Walker. Ken, let’s get into some of the seats. So is it just the bulkhead in the exit rows that we have to work with? Are there any other tips in terms of a little extra, a skoosh more room?

Walker: Sure, the obvious choice is first class. Get elite status as quickly as you can and get upgraded. You fly first class enough times in a row, you’ll never go back to coach. Or if you do, it’s just a great big sigh and oh my gosh, I’m stuck back here again. But if you don’t, there’s a few things you can do. The coach choice or the upgrade seating in the main cabin, you want to shoot for that. But you may not always be able to pay the extra $50 or whatever the airline wants for it. So what I do is I put a note in my Blackberry to beep at me exactly 24 hours before departure. Because what those airlines--they release all of those coach, choice super-award seats. With 24 hours to go, they unlock and it’s a free-for-all. First come, first served. Anybody who logs into the website and can see one, you can pick one up for free. So the way I start the whole process, as soon as I book a trip, I go straight to the airline’s website and pick an aisle seat as close to the front as I can.

Bjorklund: OK, good.

Walker: And I’ve been ignoring exit seats and I’ll tell you why in just a second. But I pick an aisle seat as close to the front as I can and I call that my fallback seat. That’s my last-resort seat. And then I’ll put in my calendar a note to beep at me that literally says, “Go get a seat 24 hours prior.” And I’ll look and see if there’s anything better--if I can move up closer, what have you. If there’s an exit-row seat available, don’t start drooling and getting all excited right away because you’ll find if you go look at SeatGuru.com--and it has been correct 100 percent of the times I’ve looked at it--most exit-row seats now are a little bit narrower and the padding in the seat itself is about an inch or 2 shorter. So, yes, there’s extra leg room but it comes at a price. Your butt falls asleep sooner because you’re sitting on a rock. And the other thing you’ll notice about exit-row seats--and especially if there’s double exit rows--if there’s two exit rows together, the window seat on an exit row rarely ever reclines because there should be an open aisleway in case you have to evacuate. They don’t want a seat reclined right across the door. So they lock those. So you’ll find yourself, “Hey, I’m in an exit row.” And you get there and you find that window exit-row seat is 6 inches narrower, it doesn’t have any padding and it doesn’t recline. Well, I don’t want it.

Bjorklund: No score there.

Walker: No score, right. Now there are other airlines that offer first-class seating in the whole cabin, like JetBlue does it, I think, for example. And I have flown JetBlue before. It is fantastic but they don’t have a lot of choices and most business travelers will tell you, “Yeah, I’d fly JetBlue but I can’t. I live in Minnesota, Southwest Airlines doesn’t fly to Minneapolis Airport.” So no matter what they do to their seats, I can’t take one. “My choices are fairly limited by the hub cities that I live in.” In most cases, it doesn’t boil down to, “Well I’ll just fly this airline. They have better seats.” No, you’re stuck picking with most of the rest of the group.

Bjorklund: Similarly with Virgin America.

Walker: Yes.

Bjorklund: You haven’t flown that yet I take it? It’s not out of Minneapolis.

Walker: I haven’t. You know, British Airways comes in first place in almost all categories from customer service to comfort to food. But if you’re a domestic United States business traveler, you’re not going to fly British Airways anytime soon.

Bjorklund: Do you think it’s worth paying extra for this economy-plus membership that some airlines offer for maybe $250, $300 a year?

Walker: I do not. I absolutely don’t because most of those seats, if you’re diligent and you get on those websites 24 hours before departure, you can almost always get one. I don’t think it’s worth the extra $250. Of course, it depends on how much you fly too. It’s kind of a catch 22. If you fly all the time you’re going to be an elite member of whatever airline you fly with and you’re going to get bumped to first class or you’re going to have free access to those coach seats anyway. So if you pay your $250 and you don’t even fly enough to be an elite airplane member then you’re paying $250 for the chance to get one of those good seats, three or four times a year? I think it’s cheaper just to buy and coach choice seat, if you really, really want one on a given trip.

Bjorklund: What about using miles for your upgrade? Is that something you commonly do when you’re on business?

Walker: You know, I’ve done it before. I happen to be platinum with Northwest Airlines and Northwest Airlines guarantees a first-class upgrade. Now, I don’t always get them. When you don’t get one, the guarantees says they’ll give you 1,500 miles just for being platinum and not sitting up in the front. My wife and I tend to vacation in some pretty faraway places and I tend to hoard my miles just for that. So we’re going to try to get to Italy this fall and if I get really close and my choice is, “Gosh, I can bump my wife up and we could both sit in first class to Italy,” or “Uh-oh, I spent 50,000 miles on a first-class upgrade last year.” The choice is pretty clear which one I would do. Don’t tell her that I got first class and she hasn’t been to...

Bjorklund: What is your very, very favorite seat on an airplane?

Walker: It depends on the airplane actually. If it’s an Airbus 319, it’s row 8-B. I think it’s 8-B, it might be 9-B because they stick the galley or the kitchen right in the middle of the left hand side of the plane and row 8 happens to be a bulkhead because there’s a kitchen right in front of you but most parents of small children who really like bulkheads don’t know that that’s a bulkhead. So they’re up there in row 4. So it’s kind of like getting the extra leg room without the guarantee of a crying child that’s also going to be sitting next to you. Sometimes, I sit in the back actually, checking seatguru.com, it’s very, very quiet back there. And if you can sit in the back and there’s not a lavatory where you have to deal with the smell, it can be pretty comfortable. Some people ask me if it’s safer back there and I think I read that but my own opinion is in the last five or 10 years, it seems like every airline disaster story I’ve read ends with a miraculous event where everyone survives and it’s a testament to the efficiency of the crew or you had a ball of aluminum burning in at terminal velocity in a great big jet fueled ball of fire and nobody makes it. I’ve never read a story where, “Fortunately the eight people in the back walked away unscathed.” It just doesn’t happen.

Bjorklund: Yeah, Popular Mechanics had done some research on that and said that the people near the tail of the plane based on their analysis of crash data were 40 percent more likely to survive a crash than those in the few rows at front.

Walker: Well, I’d like to take those Popular Mechanics engineers and sit them in the back and take a 727 and drive it right into the ground and then ask them how they feel about.

Bjorklund: Right.

Walker: I don’t think it’s ever happened that way. I don’t know.

Bjorklund: I have one last question for you and that is, does it help to dress well and hope that someone might take to you kindly and there’s an extra seat in first class or business class and because you look the part, you’re going to get a better seat?

Walker: Oh absolutely not. It can work for you, it can work against you. Most people who are looking around at the guy in the expensive suit with the $400 behind roll-aboard, have a certain amount of disdain for that particular traveler anyway. The one you can impress into getting a first-class seat, if one is available, is the gate agent. They have a remarkable amount of power and yet I see more and more fliers just berate these poor people, yell at them, come out of the bar half drunk and explain some story about why they should get upgraded. And more of them dig their own hole than ever get upgraded. If you approach a gate agent and it appeared that, you know, you’re looking around and the people sitting there might total 50 and this is a big enough plane to where you know it’s got a couple of hundred seats on it, you might start to think, “Wow, I bet that plane’s fairly empty. If you approach a gate agent with some time to spare and make sure you walk up to them when they’re not incredibly busy and just be super polite and super nice to them and say, “You know what, I could really use some help. I’ve had a long week. If there’s anything available near the front or maybe first class or maybe even if there’s three seats together that nobody is sitting in, I’d really like to move.” You know what, if those seats are there, they’ll do it. I’ll never forget the very first time I ever got upgraded to first class, it wasn’t because I was elite or anything, I was working for Rockwell Space Sciences at the time and we were contracting for NASA in Houston and I had a space shuttle tin and a NASA badge that I happened to be wearing. I got out of work and I went to the airport. And she was so impressed by the fact that I worked with NASA that she upgraded me. So I can’t tell you the suit and the tie or a nice dress or a gold necklace would help you. I think the door to that front section is guarded by the gate agent and she can be a Minotaur or she can be a real pleasant person. It just depends on how you approach her.

Bjorklund: Yes, he or she is at that counter, that last counter where most of us don’t even make any contact there anymore.

Walker: Yup, that’s correct and if you watch them, you’ll notice that they’re the last ones to come on board, count everybody, they shut the doors, I don’t believe they’re considered part of the flight crew but they do carry a fairly large weight of responsibility and to think of them as a lowly gate secretary or something is a very, very big mistake to make.

Bjorklund: Bad idea. Okay, so that was seatguru.com.

Walker: Yup, it’s one of my favorite sites.

Bjorklund: Any other good sources for airline seats?

Walker: Not that I’m aware of. Just make sure that you are familiar with the layout of your airplane and the make and model. The more you travel and the more you pay attention to the actual airplanes you’re flying, you’ll be able to glance and look and say, “Oh look! It’s an Airbus. It’s a 319. It’s a 320. It’s Boeing.” And when, you know, you start learning which plane fly, which route so you start remembering things about, “Hey, I was on a 319 the last time and they had that kitchen thing. I wonder if I should get online and check.” It never hurts to click and check. It takes 30 seconds out of your day. It might seem like a ridiculous thing to obsess over a seat but it’s the one little piece of control you have and for three hours, you might as well be comfortable, so...

Bjorklund: And if you get a bad seat, it’s your own fault.

Walker: It is your own fault, that’s true.

Bjorklund: Thanks for talking to us today.

Walker: No problem at all.

Bjorklund: You’ve been listening to an AllBusiness podcast with Ken Walker who’s our business travel blogger and a traveling technical trainer for a large software giant in California. Send your feedback on this show and suggestions for topics and guests to podcasts@allbusiness.com. I’m Chris Bjorklund, thank you for listening