Join Date: Feb 1999
Location: San Jose, California, USA
Programs: AS Plat, UA MM, AA MM, IC Plat, Marriott Gold, Hilton Gold, Hyatt Globalist
Posts: 3,161
I'm one of those people who spend a lot of time researching seating options. I find SeatGuru and SeatExpert to be lacking, but I use them because they're better than nothing. These are a few of the issues I have with these sites:
(1) There are often several possible seat maps, and it's time-consimuing to determine which seat map applies. I usually have to log into ExpertFlyer, pull up the seat map for the flight, and try to compare the seat maps to find a match. It would be great if this could be determined automatically.
(2) The information about specific seats is often wrong, but there is no quick and easy way to suggest corrections to SeatGuru and SeatExpert.
(3) SeatGuru/SeatExpert don't contain all the information I'd like to know about a seat. They cover the basics, such as legroom and recline, but I find myself keeping my own personal notes about individual seats. As a result, I have remember to cross-check my personal notes against the info online.
As one example, I am often hot on planes, yet there are certain seats on planes where the air vents are misaligned and can't be pointed toward my face. I have kept notes on this for myself, but if users could contribute and display comments on each individual seat, this would allow me to later find all user feedback (including my own) in one place.
(4) I use plane-specific threads on FT to supplement the information from SeatGuru and SeatExpert, but it's a chore both to find the correct thread and to search the dozens of posts within it to find information about a specific seat.
In summary, these are the features I'd like to see:
(1) Automatically determine the specific seat map for a specific flight.
(2) Easily submit corrections to structured information about a seat (pitch, recline, power outlet, etc.)
(3) Easily make unstructured comments for a specific seat and view comments for a specific seat and the seats of the same type (window, aisle) and in the same row and cabin. (For example, if I hover over seat 30A, it should display comments about this specific seat as well as comments that apply to all seats in row 30, about all the window seats on the plane, and about all the economy seats on the plane.)