What is the best seat when flying? You may as well ask, how long is a piece of string? It depends on your personal preferences at the end of the day. When it comes to business class, it’s becoming more of a moot point as time passes, as all aisle access is now de rigueur on top airlines.
Gone are the days to check SeatGuru (now very out of date and replaced by the much more accurate aeroLOPA) to find the best seats on board. Now you can pretty much pick anywhere in business class on many airlines and you’ll get the same experience as everyone else.
All Aisle Access For All
International business class means you could be sitting around for 10, 12 and even 18 hours in the same seat. Back in the day, you could have someone sitting next to you for that long and quite frankly I prefer not to have a stranger beside me when I sleep.
There are plenty of options for these kinds of seats. Qatar Airways has the famous Qsuites, which are some of the best in the sky. Fellow oneworld carrier British Airways is about half way through their rollout of the new Club Suites, a step up from their previous yin/yang business class cabins.
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- Cathay Pacific (pictured here) and American Airlines have the same seat, which also offers everyone access to the aisle.
The freedom you have being able to get out of your seat without disturbing someone is pretty remarkable. I flew Aer Lingus in economy class recently and really found it restricting being in a window seat with someone I didn’t know beside me. Disturbing someone who seems to be sleeping just to go to visit the toilet is not really my style unless I’m desperate!
When you look at some of the seat maps, it becomes even clearer. Checking out the one for American Airlines’ Boeing 777-300ER shows identical seats, with the only ones to avoid being Row 11 and 13 due to the missing windows. It’s the same on a Qantas Airbus A380, a Cathay Pacific 777, a Finnair A350 or a Japan Airlines 777.
Overall Thoughts
Why pay to select a seat in business class when they’re all the same? You can save a lot of money by not paying the fees. People still continue to choose a seat, especially when it’s a party of more than one travelling together, and others still have their favourites.
Even with all aisle seating, I’m still very picky about where I sit. I like to know where I’m going to be and I like having to choose where to sit. Plus researching the seating is something I enjoy – I’m weird, I know!
Do you think all business class seats are the same? Or do you think some seats are better than others? What is your criteria? Thank you for reading and if you have any comments or questions, please leave them below.
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Featured image via Live and Let’s Fly.
The seats in smaller sub-cabins are generally preferable to me over the much larger main business cabin on many airlines. Other considerations are being away from bathrooms or the galleys due to noise and sometimes one side of the plane has a much larger bathroom. Also, reverse herringbone is vastly more private than herringbone if you’re considering one airline versus another. Of course, your premise is that everyone has aisle access on a long haul flight and even with some airlines that are known for a quality business class experience, that’s not always the case. For instance, Qatar has six… Read more »
I would agree, I will always take the smaller cabin over the larger one myself, which didn’t cross my mind when I was writing that up. I don’t really mind the toilets and galleys so much, as I find on the longer flights the crew go and rest so they’re not hanging around talking.
Very true that not all airlines or even all aircraft at a particular airline have this kind of business class, but it’s certainly moving that way, it seems. It’s just like a big first class these days really.