Everyone says this, and yet everyone buys the cheapest ticket at the most convenient time. If consumers cared enough to pay more for better seats, they would have paid extra for the airlines with better seats. They didn't.

I think a big part of the problem is that it's not obvious which airlines have better seats. If I run a search on Kayak (or similar) I can easily find the right combination of price and time that I need. But short of selecting a higher class it's not clear which of the airlines will have wider seats or more legroom. There is no way to sort by these criteria. Sure, you could do some research to figure this out, but most people won't have the time or knowledge to do that.

If anyone does build a airline shopping site that does offer the ability to compare flights based on comfort I will gladly start using it exclusively.

In the US, all three of the major carriers have some type of extra-legroom economy-class seat, and all three charge extra to book into it (though if you have frequent-flyer status with the airline you can often get it at reduced price or free).

The only tricky bit to this is that thanks to mergers from airlines which didn't have this, and the time needed to roll out fleet-wide cabin refurbs, there are still planes flying for those airlines which don't have the dedicated extra-legroom sections (and the tiny regional jets simply don't get those most of the time).

When in doubt, swing over to the website of the actual airline, enter the date/destination, and in the list of flights you can click to pull up a seat map which will show you whether that section exists and if so which seats are in it (American calls it "Main Cabin Extra", Delta calls it "Comfort+" and United calls it "Economy Plus").

Seat width is not really something US airlines differentiate on very much. Some have wider seats in the international version of their extra-legroom economy (typically only one inch wider), but for the most part if you want a wider seat you need to buy a first-class or business-class ticket.

Spot-checking on some routes I do regularly, middle-tier seating is almost always a 2-3x multiple of a regular seat, while only offering ~20% more room.

Probably 1/3 of the time I travel from YVR I am put on a plane with a different tail than the airline I booked through. I pay for "Air Canada to SFO" but end up getting a United flight. So I've given up trying to figure out exactly which airline I am flying with.

(I actually really really hate air canada for this. I keep forgetting that I need to go to the united checkin at SFO, not the Air Canada desk which is 11 billion footsteps away at the other end of everything.)

Admittedly I haven't flown United in a couple of years, but my experience with them was the same as with every other airline: when booked on a codeshare (i.e., Airline A issues the ticket, but Airline B operates the flight), the itinerary emailed to me would always say "Check in at the (insert operating airline) ticket counter".

At least on the case of Air Canada and United, that's code-share flights. If you book via the Air Canada website it's very very obvious whether you're taking a real AC plane or not, but third party booking sites tend to hide that.

In case it helps, the United code-share flights are numbered AC[345]\d\d\d.

The information is there, although in different placed depending on which website is used. I just have to remember to check the fine print, at least when I am the person actually booking the ticket. When i'm not, then I have to check the boarding docs for the little "operated by" tag. The whole scheme is not something you expect from a supposedly national airline like AC.

I've also had this happen with Alaska and United.

Are these codesharing flights? I'm usually picky about choosing the exact right flights that are actually operated by the airline of my choice so that I get what I want.

For a while that was JetBlue's thing. Their investors weren't happy about it.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/jetblue-to-add-bag-fees-reduce-l...

At least the last time I flew with them, JetBlue had wider seats and more legroom than any other airline I've recently flown on... but the seats had this incredibly uncomfortable lumbar support that felt like a huge wedge poking into my lower back.

JetBlue has the only economy seats of the US and EU carriers that I can tolerate. Every other carrier that I've flown, I have to upgrade to at least premium economy to get a decent seat.

Seatguru and most flight searches will show you the info, but you do need to pay for more comfortable seats generally. Even on JetBlue, I buy the "Even More Space" seats when available.

Kayak shows seat pitch for many flights — at least those where the equipment is known — if you expand the fare to see the details. It's right down there with the icons indicating whether the fare has wifi or seat power and stuff.

But does it show seat width?

Both British Airways and Emirates A380s are ten-abreast in economy. But BA's seats are narrower, being the same physical seat as they use in their 787s, resulting in uselessly wide aisles in the A380.

It's a mess.

The BA 787 economy seats are a total disaster. Narrow and poor legroom makes them worse than EasyJet.

Seatguru.com. I ruled out some airlines based on that last time.

I always felt that it's mind-bogglingly amazing that technology exists to let me cross continents in mere hours at an affordable price. Therefore I never minded any sort of discomfort caused by crammed seats and will happily pay the lowest possible price for the flight.

This would probably change if I flew with any frequency though.

First I've heard that you can tell in advance what kind of seats to expect. I mean, I'm not hugely surprised, but it's not exactly common knowledge.

Buy a business class ticket.

Because that's what the rest of us would be paying for coach if all the seats were big enough to comfortably fit you.

For European business class short haul flights, it won't help. BA refitted their A319/A320/A321s some time around July 2014, which included reducing business pitch from 34" to 30". Lufthansa is the same [1][2][3]

EasyJet and other LCCs actually have a better proposition for leg room now, as you can pay for and select an extra leg-room seat at time of purchase.

(EDIT: pre-empting "there's no need for leg room on short flights", I'm talking about flights of up to ~5 hours)

[1] http://www.seatguru.com/airlines/Lufthansa/Lufthansa_Airbus_...

[2] http://www.seatguru.com/airlines/Lufthansa/Lufthansa_Airbus_...

[3] http://www.seatguru.com/airlines/Lufthansa/Lufthansa_Airbus_...

No the shouldn't. For most of us economy seats work quite fine. I'm 1.89 and regularly have 12+ hour flights with Lufthansa. I prefer cheaper tickets to a little bit more legroom that I don't really need. And if those seats wouldn't be sufficient, I'd just buy Economy Plus tickets instead of complaining about economy tickets.

To quote the great: "you are in a seat, in the air, flying 1000km/h... it's a miracle". Without the planes, it would take 2 weeks to cross Atlantic. So love it already ;-)