Do you have status at any airline? If not, the only ways to get extra legroom are to book business class (as opposed to coach) seats (but then that'll be prohibitive for your traveling companions who will pay cash), since it only takes 2x the miles typically, or to book coach on a flight that has Economy Plus on UA (most of them do) or Economy Comfort on DL (not that many of them do yet AFAIK). (AA has announced a Main Cabin Extra that's equivalent, but it won't likely be on the routes you'd most like in time for your trip.)

Power at the seat is tricky. All airlines tend to put power at the seat in business class, but in coach it various by airplane type and then is often only in certain rows. For example, in UA it may be mostly only in those Economy Plus rows on some planes. It's very hard to generalize. You have to look up the specific plane type (which you can do by flight number if you wish) at:

www.seatguru.com

and/or:

www.seatexpert.com

and it will tell you which seats are good and bad for various reasons (legroom, window alignment, etc) and will identify which seats have power at the seat and which don't. And will also explain what kind of video there is (that can vary by plane type too!).

Here's the thing: If you find a US airline which flies from the US to OSL itself, it may do that with smaller one-aisle planes that have very few amenities in coach. If you fly a US airline the long haul (DL from MSP or UA from ORD) to their European hub (presumably AMS for DL or FRA for UA), you'll be on a big two-aisle plane which is more likely to have amenities in coach, but of course you'll be connecting to a short-haul in Europe (and a short-haul in the US if using UA) on which there'll be few amenities in coach (but it'll only be a one-to-two-hour flight).

Keep in mind also that for east-bound, the longer the main flight, the easier it might be to sleep on it. Consider that if there are optoins to transfer in the midwest vs slightly cheap options to transfer on the east coast. You'll lose a couple hours of continuous sleep possibility by transferring to the TATL flight on the east coast compared to in the midwest.

Umm, all DL international aircraft have had Economy Comfort for a year now, and all two-cabin domestic aircraft had Economy Comfort implemented as of 7 June. The only aircraft without it are the 50-seat RJs, and DL is trying to retire a huge fraction of them anyway with the acquisition of the FL 717s and bringing more 70-ish seat 2-cabin RJs into the fleet.

Wow, you have all been so helpful. With each post I learn something not only for this trip but for all my future travels! That's the great thing about FT!

sdsearch, I started a thread in March that you kindly answered about Hotel Points for Norway. We do not typically stay in hotels in the U.S., but if we do in the next year, I will look into Choice Hotels. The one thing I don't like about their reward stays, however, is that you can book only 60 days in advance (for properties outside the U.S.) unless you have status. When not staying in a major Norwegian city, we're looking forward to staying in locally owned B&B's and inns.

I do not have status with any airline, but your information about options for extra legroom will help a lot. I have used seatguru in the past and will certainly use it for our flights to Norway. And I really appreciate your advice about flights to give us the most continuous hours for sleep.

I know that availability will be the biggest deciding factor, but my preference now for airlines is:
1. DL
2. UA
3. AA
And their respective alliances, of course.