Jaunted - Tag: Seatmates

In-Flight Social Network 'Planely' Wants to Set You Up in the Skies

JetSetCD — 2011-01-19T13:16:35-05:00

Instead of boarding your flight wondering what kind of annoyance your anonymous seatmate will be, you can actually attempt to the take the matter into your own hands by pairing up with likeminded travelers on your plane. How? Well, you could always creepily nudge the pretty girl in the waiting area and ask her what her seat number is, or you could trust the internet through the new social networking site Planely.

"Social flying revolution" is what they're calling it, and while it hasn't exactly reached the critical mass needed to earn the "revolution" part, Planely is gaining in active users. Here's what happens: you go on Planely.com, register some basic info about yourself, then add your upcoming fights. Planely will then let you know if another other Planely users will be on your flight or at your start and end airports, in case you're up for some flirting, general conversation, convention gossip or just trading stock tips at 35,000 feet. You can even specify what you'd want to do, which for us is typically "sleep, work ahead on our laptop and read," so maybe we wouldn't be your ideal seatmate if you're feeling chatty.

New Airplane Design Proposes Seating Passengers Face-To-Face

Omri — 2009-09-08T15:04:48-05:00

If British design company Design Q gets its way, airplanes of the future will seat passengers in an innovative—dare we say interactive—high-density configuration. More specifically, they intend to essentially seat passengers face to face for the entire trip:

A British design company says it is working on plans for new sideways, staggered seating on airplanes as a cost-cutting option for airlines to maximize the number of passengers on board. Design Q released images of the concept, which has a row of seats facing inward on each side of the plane and two rows running back-to-back down the middle of the aircraft.

Listen. We know that sometimes we can be a little harsh about the so-called "innovations" that so-called "experts" bring to the table. We've even been known to inappropriately dismiss a good idea or two, an overreaction we put down to years of travel having made us jaded. So we want to be very clear about this:

Five Unspoken Rules Of Seatmate Etiquette

egw — 2009-03-04T14:31:14-05:00

Just because your seat pocket doesn't contain a list of rules for Seatmate Etiquette along with the safety pamphlet and the SkyMall catalog doesn't mean the cabin is a place where anything goes. But sometimes we wish the unwritten compact of in-flight behavior was set down -- if only so we could throw the book at our favorite offenders. Are you one of them? We've come up with five regulations for our fellow passengers, and we'll try to abide by them as well.