A New Era in Air Travel Seat Selection: Introducing AeroLOPA

Factors to Consider Choosing an Airline Seat

Choosing the best seat involves considering multiple factors. Bassinet seats are a common preference among parents of infants, as are seats that sit on the angle of a plane and allow a little extra cheeky leg room, much like an exit row (which parents will know we can no longer book!).

Other common seat complaints include being too close to the lavatories or galley, armrests that won’t fold down (look at you, premium economy), and, one of our pet peeves, the row of seats at the back that can’t recline when everyone in front of you can!

The Need for Accurate Seat Maps

Finding the best seat requires reliable reference material and accurate seat maps. Historically, SeatGuru was the go-to website for this purpose, providing detailed seat maps and user reviews indicating the best and worst seats on a plane.

It was available in app format, and we reliably used and recommended it to our readers for years until we started to note inaccuracies and out-of-date information.

The Decline of SeatGuru

Despite being bought out by travel industry giant TripAdvisor over 15 years ago, SeatGuru’s maps have become increasingly outdated. Their app is no longer available on Google Play or the App Store, and the maps do not appear to have been updated in the last two years.

Frankly, the product no longer delivers. Whether TripAdvisor has decided it’s unprofitable (because most people use SeatGuru AFTER they’ve made their airline ticket purchase, not before) is not clear, but it’s clear it’s dying a death, although slowly, as SeatGuru is such a familiar brand name.

Let’s introduce you to AeroLOPA

A new website, AeroLOPA, is emerging as a fabulous alternative to SeatGuru. AeroLOPA offers incredibly detailed seating plans for over 170 international airlines, covering all aircraft styles in their fleets.

AeroLOPA (which we believe stands for Layout of Passenger Accommodations) includes drawn-to-scale diagram of the passenger cabins. The detail in some listings goes as far as showing you exactly where windows line up against the seats and where there are offesets in rows, rather than straight across.

Example: Air New Zealand Wide Bodied Aircraft

The only small trick, you’ll need to know the exact model of plane you’ll be flying. Unless we’ve missed the functionality, presently the website doesn’t seem to work off flight numbers like SeatGuru.

Features of AeroLOPA

AeroLOPA’s user-friendly interface provides comprehensive details about each plane, including the number of seats in each cabin and precise diagrams showing seat types and window alignment.

Here, for example, is the cabin design of Emirates A380-800 economy.

Using AeroLOPA, you can identify features such as misaligned windows in specific rows, or when the window seat is entirely over the wing. The site also provides in-depth descriptions for many airlines of the compelte cabin fitout. Here’s an example for American Airlines:

So not only can you see exactly where seats are positioned, you can work out your seat dimension and row pitch, your seat recline (sometimes even the seat model for your real airline nerds!), the entertainment system onboard, and whether you can plug in your electronics.

What could be better about AeroLOPA

The website is clearly still a work in progress. It lacks the ‘clickability’ functionality to drill in on the pros and cons of each seat like you could get on SeatGuru, and the comprehensive footnotes are only available on some airlines (considerably lacking when we investigated the site for the most popular Middle Eastern carriers).

There is also no search by flight number functionality; you need to go back to your original airline booking documents to see your exact aircraft type.

We love that the website owner seems to be keeping it up to date. We hope they can add some app functionality in the future, too, to make it more user-friendly.

Ready to give AeroLOPA a try?

What makes AeroLOPA absolutely brilliant is it costs you nothing (for now).

Take AeroLOPA for a spin here for your next flight

So next time you’re thinking about forking out the extra cash for a paid seat assignment (on long haul with kids, I’d argue almost always worth it if not included in your ticket class), make sure AeroLOPA is one of your bookmarked pages to maximise the chances you’ll get the seat you actually want!

NB note that airlines can and do change aircraft on you at the last minute!

As for the best seating arrangement to choose when travelling with kids – this is entirely up to you, your kids’ ages and your preference. We discuss this in a lot more detail, and what seating combos have worked best for us in our guide to planning for family flights.

If you’re new to flying as a family, make sure you check out the Flying With Kids section of our website. We have been adding to this with handy tips for family flyers for over a decade!