Most people imagine the life of a travelling associate is a glamorous one. Although there are perks, it is far from attractive a lot of the time. Dragging a controversially large carry-on suitcase around an airport at 5:30 on Monday mornings, sitting in an oddly-smelling rental car in Humidville, FL, eating overly-priced, mediocre room service by yourself, working long hours and spending several hours of your week sitting next to strangers on an MD-80 airplane is reality.
I recently started on a project in South Florida, and it had been awhile since I’d been a road warrior. I had forgotten some of my strategies for staying organized and keeping my blood pressure down. I’m sharing some of my tips and tricks to keeping it all together when living on the road, and I’d love for others to share theirs. This article is all about knowing your airplane seat via Seat Guru.
Airplane Seats--so much to learn about them!
Until I started traveling frequently, I never had a clue what type of plane I was aboard. A plane is a plane is a plane, right? Wings? Check. Pilot? Check. Seat? Check. Liftoff? Check. Boom—satisfied customer. Eventually, I began to realize when you spend your 3 hour commute in an aircraft, the type of plane and where you sit sometimes matters.
My first few weeks on the road led me to observe people using their laptops during an entire flight; however, my laptop would inevitably die. I started to ask seasoned consultants how this miracle of battery life could be. That was when I became informed of what I call the “cigarette lighter plug thing” (aka DC power port) on certain seats of certain types of aircrafts. I couldn’t believe that I didn’t know about this power port!
It was this sort of conversation that caused a very well-connected, seasoned consultant to enter a magical supply closet and pull out an ownerless laptop charger with said DC power hookups. I embraced my new power source and immediately began planning all of the great things I would accomplish with it.
That was when I realized the big question hadn’t been answered.
Q: How do I know if there is a power port in my seat?
The very well-connected, seasoned consultant described seat guru to me, and it rocked my world. It’s quite simple: first you sort by airline in the left-hand column, then sort by aircraft type in the left-hand column (you can find this you when you book your flight) and you can analyze where to sit based on the map of the plane. On the map, there are little dots marking which seats have power ports (NOTE: some planes have more ports than others). Seat guru color codes the seats for good, decent and bad and describes the logic behind the rating (hover over the seat with your mouse to read the description). It tells you important things you don’t normally think about, such as media box taking up space under seat, lots of kitchen noise, limited seat recline, etc.
I’ve now used seat guru for both personal and professional travel, and it is one of my favorite travel websites. When a website assures that I’ll be able to watch many episodes of 30 Rock on my flight, I’m happy as a clam.
Please comment if you have a similar tool in your travel tool belt as I always love to have more!