How to get the best seat on an airplane

Having explained this to so many people that I even get bored telling it, I thought I’d post it here so people can read it for themselves.

These are only guidelines and I take no responsibility to anyone missing flights due to my advice. These tactics are also tried and tested on Europe – Asia, standard flights and I don’t know if they’d work in the Americas or on low-cost airlines.

To get the best seat…

1. I used to advise against checking in online but I now do it myself. Checking in well in advance ensures you a reasonable seat if all else fails. I, personally, chose a window seat somewhere near the back (to minimise the chances of having someone sat next to me.

2. Arrvie at the airport in plenty of time (no point cutting it fine) but don’t check it until the last minute. Find your check in counter and eye-it-up to see how things are going. If possible, try to find out if the flight is full (maybe from the ticket counter) but don’t let them know what you’re up to.

3. Check in around 1.20 hr to 50 mins before the flight depending on the size of the airport. Basically, you want to try and make sure that you’re the last person checking in. If you’re given 3 seats to yourself and you know you’re the last person to check in, you know that they are your seats.

4. Be extermely apologetic for being late. Once you’ve regained your breath (which you were faking to be out of) ask them: “how’s the flight looking today”. Find out how many spare seats they’ve got on board.

More often than not they’ll spin the screen round so you can see it so you can see exactly how many spots they’ve got. Then you have one of three possible scenarios.

1. It’s not a full flight, in this case you ask politely for a row of seats to yourself
2. It’s completely full – in which case they’ve hopefully given your seat to someone else and they will have to updgrade you to Business or (if that’s full too) they’ll give you a hotel for the night and some cash (probs best not to do this if you really need to be somewhere but I’ve never experienced a completely full plane).
3. It’s practically full. There are no better seats than the one you’re in so you just accept it and enjoy the flight.

Now, if you have a stopover somwhere, it is also possible to ensure a good seat for the second leg. When you arrive in your stopover location, go and find the airlines’s counter and simply ask them the same questions: “How’s the flight looking today?” and “Is there any seats together that are not yet taken?”. Make sure you do this less than 45 minutes before departure to ensure that check-in is completed and that nobody will be assigned any of those seats after you’ve been told about them.

I hope you find this helpful. You’ll never have to be stuck in between two terrible people ever again!