Prescription Suitcase

Your seat on an airplane can make or break your trip.  If you get a good seat, you arrive at your destination (relatively) relaxed and refreshed.  If you get a lousy seat, you arrive feeling like you need a stiff drink, a cigarette, and a long nap.  So what’s a good seat and how do you get one?  Here are some of my own observations on the subject:

•  Aisle seats are better.  This goes without saying, for a couple of reasons. One, you have a little extra room on one side to stick your foot into the aisle if you need to, or to lean over to get something from underneath the seat in front of you.  Two, you’re off the plane faster.  If you’ve got a tight connection, you can jump into the aisle as soon as that fasten seatbelt light goes off and be out of that sardine can marginally faster than your middle- and window-seated peers.  Just watch out for those wayward beverage carts and you’ll be fine.

• Don’t knock the middle seat.  Contrary to popular opinion, I’ve actually found middle seats to be OK under certain circumstances.  If you’re on a redeye and everyone’s sleeping anyway, a middle seat is no big deal at all.  They’re also OK if you happen to be seated behind a bulkhead or in an exit row; somehow, the extra legroom afforded by these locations makes up for the fact that you’re the peanut butter in a human sandwich.

• Window seats are delightful, but only if you have the whole row to yourself.  That’s a rare occurrence in these days of overbooked, overcrowded airplanes, but I’ll still scoot over to the window seat if there’s no one else in my row.

• Exit row seats rock, but they are harder and harder to get these days.  If you’re lucky enough to score one, make sure you actually pay attention to the safety information card and understand what you’ll be expected to do if there is some kind of emergency in flight.  Act responsible and be nice to the flight attendants.  You might be taking orders from them in a life-or-death situation, so you want to stay on their good side.

• Sit near the front of the aircraft, if only for convenience.  My husband told me years ago that you stand a better chance of surviving a plane crash if you’re sitting in the back of the plane.  I don’t know where he read that, but if you do a little research, you’ll find that the odds of meeting your maker in a plane crash are actually quite slim.  One statistic I read stated that if you were to board a random flight every day for the rest of your life, it would still take around 22,000 years before you would be killed in a plane crash.  Another reference I found indicated that, statistically, you could be in five plane crashes before you’d actually get killed by one.  I have no idea as to the veracity of either of those two statements, but I think it’s a safe bet that something else is going to get you before a plane crash will.  So don’t sacrifice a quick exit from the plane in your connecting city or final destination in exchange for a slightly higher chance of survival in a crash.  It’s just not worth it.

• Another reason to avoid the rear of the aircraft: those stinky lavatories!  Ick.  I will say no more, except to wonder rhetorically what in the heck people eat before they fly?!?

• Finally, check out one of my favorite travel websites when you book your next trip: seatguru.com.  They’ve got seating configurations for almost every type of aircraft for just about every airline, and the seats are color-coded to warn you if you’re about to plant your tush in a seat that is actually a secret doorway to the fifth circle of hell.  A green from seatguru means “OK to sit here,” yellow means “Buyer beware,” and red means, “Not if you value your life and sanity.”