Forget Seatguru, before you choose a seat on board now you have to go to aeroLOPA

We have talked many times about Seatguru, a unique service in the world, a site that allows you to discover the merits and demerits of all the seats on board aircraft of all the world's major airlines. Today, however, I discovered a service that is even better than Seatguru, although it does not yet have all the airlines included, but the major ones are all there (including ITA Airways): it has a resolution and detail that other services dream of.

What is aeroLOPA

The site has a list of 50 companies from around the world: for each carrier there are all the models of the planes in the fleet and for each model there is a detailed map of the plane, where the cabin layouts are perfectly drawn from the seats to the bathrooms, from the wings to the emergency exits and above all the exact position of the windows, which often, as all frequent flyers know, are misaligned with respect to the seats. In addition to this one can immediately tell how the seats are set up in the different classes and not risk any nasty surprises once on board.

The difference between aeroLOPA and the cold airline maps or the poor resolution of Seatguru is a real revolution. Those in the airline industry will probably know that LOPA stands for "Layout Of Passenger Accommodation." The aeroLOPA maps present an accurate representation of the location of seats and the distance between them and any other cabin facilities, such as galleys and toilets. And of course they also include accurate locations of cabin windows and doors.

Why aeroLOPA is better

 

The difference is all in the details, I recently wrote an article in which I explain what are the best seats aboard ITA Airways' A350., talking about business class I do not recommend place 1a and places 9a and 9l.

The reason is precisely the misalignment between seats and windows: the first row, as seen in the drawing above, has one of the two windows covered by the structure that holds the monitor, this forces you to keep the window closed because otherwise you would not be able to watch TV and, likewise, the TV prevents you from looking out the window. For rows 9a/l, however, in the picture above you can see very clearly (which is impossible to tell with the company's map) that these seats have only one window available and not two like all other seats.

Another example: if we like to look out of the window, it will be convenient to know which rows have wing encumbrance resulting in reduced visibility outside. If we travel in economy on Air France's A350, to have an unobstructed view out the window, we will need to aim for the seats beyond number 32.

In conclusion

AeroLOPA is an incredible innovation in this view, it also has the maps of ITA Airways which is not present on SeatGuru instead, and the detail of these maps is perfect. A jump on the site, which is free, before choosing a seat is definitely worth doing.