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Tags: Holiday Travel / Seats / Seating / In-Flight Comfort / Airplanes / Airplane News / → All Tags
Five Ways To Score Better Airlines Seats For Holiday Travel
Like it or not the holiday season has arrived, and chances are you’ll be spending some time at the airport. We’ve jotted down a few of our experiences that have helped make the whole getting there process a little better, even if it’s just as simple as getting out of the middle seat. We can't promise that these will work, but they have worked in the past, and it never hurts to ask!
· Pick Out Your Seat:
If you didn’t pick out your seat when you booked your ticket, it’s time to check and select one right now. Enter your confirmation number at the airline’s website and it should be fairly simple to select your own seat—assuming the airline still allows you to book a seat without a fee. Use SeatGuru and SeatExpert to determine which coach seats are better than others, and maybe you’ll even learn that your seat has power underneath.
More tips and hints after the break
Tags: In-Flight Comfort / Air New Zealand / Airlines / Airline News / Seats / → All Tags
Air New Zealand Wants To Sell Us A Coach-Middle-Seat-Bed Thing
We might be a little premature in declaring a new travel trend, but it appears that selling empty middle seats is the new checked baggage fee. WestJet recently shed a little light on plans to make passengers a little more comfy while cashing in at the same time. Now Air New Zealand, the airline that loves wacky stuff like in-flight dating and body paint, is looking to do the same thing.
As part of a total makeover of the airline—they’re looking to change up their livery and uniforms among other things—they want to sell empty middle seats to coach passengers. If the seat next to you is empty it will be yours as long as you are willing to part with $150. You’ll even be allowed to fully stretch out, as apparently the two seats will slide forward to make some sort of economy bed. They are still hush hush about all the details, and they want to wait until next year before revealing all the secrets about the new seating configurations.
Tags: In-Flight Entertainment / Technology / In-Flight Comfort / → All Tags
Your iPod Will Become The New Ultimate In-Flight Entertainment
Right along with in-flight wifi, the general range of in-flight entertianment continues to widen. A few months back, we summed up the current choices for IFE (in-flight entertainment) with our 2009 Airline In-Flight Entertainment Status Update, which included everything from full fleets boasting satellite television to those airlines where it's strictly "pack a word search book." Hopefully soon all airlines will have some option for bored passengers, and we think we found the best one:
The newest advance in IFE comes from Rockwell Collins, who have introduced the ability for passengers to hook up their iPods and other such personal media devices to a seat's entertainment system. This would enable you to watch the movies you've downloaded to your iPod via the larger screen on the seatback in front of you.
Tags: Traveling With Children / Baby Travel / Cathay Pacific / In-Flight Comfort / Airline News / → All Tags
In-Flight Service Includes A Diaper Kit On Cathay Pacific
Hong Kong-based airline Cathay Pacific has a great reputation for a few reasons: an amazing Studio CX in-flight entertainment system, flight attendants who keep their cool even on a 15-hour direct flight from JFK to HKG, and free in-flight all-you-can-eat ramen noodles (as recently sampled by us). But little did we know that they'll also give you a free diaper kit if you're traveling with an infant.
The news comes via Cathay's Twitter, and we did some digging to discover just how much of a bundle your bundle of joy will be receiving.
Tags: Bad Ideas / Seatmates / Seats / Seating / In-Flight Comfort / Airline News / Airplanes / → All Tags
New Airplane Design Proposes Seating Passengers Face-To-Face
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:
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What Time Do You Fly? Morning, Noon Or Night?
You're about to book a flight and you're sitting there, just staring at your departure time options, all of which suck. Take the 6am? Perhaps the noon flight? What about that red eye? The questions of when in the day to hop a flight is really the most stressful part of making plans for your travel days.
So let's discuss: what is your favorite time of the day to fly? We'll weigh the pros and cons of morning, afternoon and evening flights, and we want to hear from you, whether you've got more to add or simply a solid answer. Help a frequent flyer out, yo.
Morning Flights (between 5am-10am)
· Pros: The most obvious pro of a early flight is arriving earlier and thus having the rest of the day (or a whole day) to get exploring your destination. We also love how subways, buses and other public transportation are less crowded at dawn, before rush hour, and how you can easily be just as anxious about your flight as about scoring some coffee. If you miss your early flight, then you've got the rest of the day to try for stand-by on another. Not to mention that the earliest flights are often cheapest.
