There is a new website online called aeroLOPA, which features seating plans for British Airways and American Airlines. People in the airline industry will know that LOPA stands for layout of passenger accommodations. Frequent flyers and others will usually refer to it as the seat map.
Many airline websites will feature a generic diagram showing passenger seats in relation to the doors, toilets and galleys. Being fairly basic, they can be incorrect, out of date and might even not reflect certain planes in the fleet. This is now solved with aeroLOPA.
Seating Plans Don’t Show Windows
When flying, I always try to pick a seat with a lot of windows. You can’t really tell from most seat maps where the windows are positioned, so guessing is the name of the game here.
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- British Airways seat maps are broken up by class.
Recently, I went so far as to take pictures of all the window seats on a Qatar Airways Boeing 777 fitted with QSuites so others would have this knowledge in future. I find it pretty important, obviously.
aeroLOPA Seating Plans
Happily, the aeroLOPA people have taken their drawings from actual LOPAs which means the windows are included. It also means the spacing of the seats, all the surrounds, positioning of galleys and so on are spot on.
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- The missing windows at Row 10 and 12 are easy to see on this British Airways Boeing 777-200ER plan.
Another feature of the website is the fact that all the different aircraft variations are represented. This is especially useful when an airline is going through a process of refitting their cabins.
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- Incredible detail seen here for the American Airlines Boeing 777-300ER.
The effort put in to make the plans accurate is amazing. Frequent flyers and some airline staff were asked to feedback on the designs to ensure everything was captured correctly. I especially like the small blue dots along the window line that show the position of the oneworld alliance logo beside doors where present!
Overall Thoughts
aeroLOPA is an excellent resource for those flying with American Airlines and British Airways. They plan on adding more airlines in due course and my suggestion was Qantas, as they are the only airline who seem to use LOPAs for their online seat maps.
I’ve already used this additional knowledge to my benefit. Next year I’m due to fly American Airlines transatlantic in business class, and I selected 3A on the Boeing 777-300ER. Turns out 4A has two windows, so I’ve moved seats. The more windows, the better it is for me!
My window fascination knows no bounds, as I once wrote about how the Dreamliner isn’t the aircraft with the largest windows. I also did a piece on what I hated most about the 787 – the windows! Anyway, you’ll want to go to aeroLOPA’s website and check out the seating plans for yourself.
What do you think of the aeroLOPA seating plans? Will you use them in future? Thank you for reading and if you have any comments or questions, please leave them below.
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Hi, TFD! Do you know if aeroLOPA is planning to expand their seat map inventory beyond BA and AA?
What does this add above expert flyer and seat guru?
It gives a more accurate representation of the exact placement of the cabin furnishings, distances between seats and monuments, as well as the precise position of the windows, doors and so on. It’s far better and is based on LOPAs that the airlines use themselves internally. There’s no reason to use anything else once you have this, essentially.
Hi, Joni! Yes, they plan to add more airlines in due course. It will be interesting to see who is next on the list. I’m very curious myself!