Are these the most accurate airline seat maps online?

Accurate airline seat maps can be hard to find, and when taking that long overseas flight, getting the right seat is important. After all, nobody wants to be sat across from the toilet for 14 hours straight!

Possibly worse is selecting a window seat and then finding there’s no window in your row. To add insult to injury, you may even have paid for that seat. So how do you work out exactly what seats are where?

Airline Seating Plans Vary A Lot

When you select a seat online, you’re presented with a rudimentary seating plan. The most detail you get is what seat is beside what other seat, plus an indication of the toilets, galleys and doors – if you’re lucky. It’s hardly an architectural plan, that’s for sure.

British Airways go so far as to have a disclaimer when selecting a seat. It says, “The seat plan is for guidance only and not true to scale. Extra space between rows does not indicate extra legroom.” Okay then! What about the published plans on airline websites? Some are quite good, showing things pretty much to scale. Others are pretty bad – looking at you Aer Lingus – and special mention to British Airways who snobbishly break theirs up by cabin class. It still doesn’t show where the windows are, which is quite important to those who like a window seat.

Where Are The Most Accurate Seat Maps?

You’re probably thinking I’m going to direct you to perennial favourite, SeatGuru. In fact, I’m not, because I’ve never really thought much of that website at all. It’s far too generic and it’s a bit old fashioned looking these days.

Instead, I’m going to tell you to take a crack at aeroLOPA. They have fabulously designed seating plans for 17 airlines at the time of writing. This includes large network carriers like American Airlines, Qatar Airways and Cathay Pacific plus low fare airlines like Ryanair and easyJet.

Everything is shown, from the actual design and angle of the seats in business class, to the positioning of the galleys. In the above image, you can even see the A380 upper deck storage cabinets located beside the window seats represented. Everything is there.

All plans also show the windows and their relative position to the seat. Don’t want to crane your neck? You can tell which seats not to choose. Want to avoid the window seat with no window? It’s very easy to tell where that is.

Overall Thoughts

These are the most accurate seat maps I’ve ever come across online. Apart from the six airlines mentioned above, you will also find seating plans for Aer Lingus, Air Canada, Air France, Alaska Airlines, Finnair, Iberia, Japan Airlines, JetBlue, United Airlines, Virgin Atlantic and Vueling. You can check them all out at the aeroLOPA website.

While some airlines are more complete than others, the site continues to grow and is becoming an important resource. I’ve used it countless times in the past few months to inform me when choosing seats on various oneworld alliance flights I have coming up. I absolutely love it, as it shows everything I want to see and is precise.

Are these the most accurate seat maps you’ve seen or have you ever come across better? Thank you for reading and if you have any comments or questions, please leave them below.

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Featured image by Alexander Schimmeck via Unsplash.