What Does Seat Pitch Mean? Imagine two rows of airplane seats. Instead of measuring from the edge of your seat to the seatback in front of you, seat pitch measures from a fixed point on one seat to the same point on the next seat. For example: Seat A → 31 inches → Seat B…
Why Do Exit Row Seats Have More Legroom? Emergency exits need to remain accessible so passengers and crew can use them during an evacuation. That generally requires more open space between rows than you’d find in a typical economy cabin. For passengers, the result can be substantially more room for your legs. Instead of sitting…
What Is SeatMaps? SeatMaps is an aircraft seat-map database designed to help travelers understand the cabin and seating configuration of a flight. Instead of simply showing that your flight operates on a Boeing 777 or Airbus A350, SeatMaps can help you dig deeper into the specific layout used by an airline. That’s important because aircraft…
What Is Airline Revenue Management? How Airlines Price Seats If you’ve ever watched a flight cost $427 on Monday, $581 on Wednesday and then somehow fall back to $489 a few days later, you may have wondered what exactly the airline is doing. What changed was the airline’s willingness to sell that seat at a…
It’s easy to turn award travel into a math problem. A flight costs $1,000. The airline wants 50,000 miles. Divide one by the other, calculate your cents-per-point value and decide whether that is a good award redemption. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that approach. But it leaves out something important: you’re not redeeming points in…
The Future of Airline Cabins: Why Economy and Premium Economy Are Getting Better For decades, the basic hierarchy of airline cabins was relatively straightforward. But those lines are beginning to blur. Some of the features once used to distinguish expensive premium cabins, better privacy, improved sleep, personalized seating positions and increasingly sophisticated technology are gradually…
How Much Is an Airline Mile Worth? One of the first questions people ask after accumulating airline miles is deceptively simple: How much are my miles actually worth? Unfortunately, there isn’t a single answer, because unlike cash, most airline miles don’t have a fixed value when redeemed for flights. The same 50,000 miles might replace…
Why Would Airlines Sell More Tickets Than They Have Seats? Imagine you’re booking a flight with 180 seats. It would only seem logical that once passenger #180 buys a ticket, the airline should stop selling tickets. But that’s not necessarily what happens… Airlines know from decades of operating flights that not every reservation ultimately turns…
Most travelers assume their trip begins at their home airport. If you live in New York, you search from New York. And if you live in Washington, you search from Washington. If you live in Charlotte, you search from Charlotte. It just makes sense! But airfare and award availability don’t always cooperate with where you…
Does aircraft type matter when booking a flight? The answer is yes, but probably not for the reasons most travelers think. Aircraft type can influence cabin layout, seat configuration, noise, cabin environment and the overall onboard experience. But the airplane itself is only part of the equation. In many cases, how an airline configures the…
