Comfort vs. Closeness: Couple’s Guide to Domestic Flight Seat Selection

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There are a few different options for couples when booking seats on domestic flights. My father and his wife liked to book adjacent aisle seats. However, my wife Sharon and I take a different approach – we book an aisle and window seat, leaving the middle seat empty in hopes of having extra space if it remains unclaimed. For a while, we would offer the window seat to a passenger if they ended up in the middle. But on one morning flight, I wanted to keep the window seat so I could have a comfortable place to take a nap. So we kept our aisle and middle seats and had a stranger sit between us.

During the flight, I fell asleep sometime between the end of the safety video and before we taxied for takeoff. When I woke up, I watched some videos on my phone and worked on my computer until it was time to land. Only then did Sharon and I start talking about getting her bag down from the overhead. The passenger sitting between us was shocked to find out that we were together and yet didn’t want to sit next to each other. They didn’t say it out loud, but we could see the expression of surprise on their face that they had just spent a two-hour flight seated between a couple who chose not to sit together.

Flights are often leaving at full capacity, leaving little chance of getting an empty seat next to you. This has led to a change in seat selection strategy. For seats that require payment, such as JetBlue’s Even More Space seats, we opt for an aisle and a middle seat. Middle seats tend to be cheaper, and paying for a window seat only to trade it for a middle seat doesn’t make sense. However, for shorter flights, we may reserve an aisle and a window seat and keep those seats for the flight. On long flights, we prefer the aisle and middle seats or adjacent aisle seats for easier restroom access (assuming there isn’t a snack cart blocking the aisle).

We’ve already mentioned that we’re comfortable with one of us traveling while the other stays home, so it should come as no surprise that we don’t always feel the need to sit together on a plane, as well. Typically, we both wear noise-cancelling headphones, so we generally don’t really engage in conversation during the flight. Actually, if the plane offers free messaging, we’re just as likely to communicate through text rather than trying to talk over the background noise of the flight.

What’s your preference when picking seats on narrowbody flights as a couple? Do you need to sit next to each other, or do you value comfort over closeness?

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