One of the oldest online tools that frequent flyers relied on has finally shut down. I guess this shouldn’t be surprising, but I also can’t make sense of why it had to be this way…
Continue reading: End Of An Era: SeatGuru Officially Shuts Down, Redirects To TripAdvisor
Share your questions, experiences, and thoughts below.
Aerolopa is good but it’s not entirely complete.
What we really need are 360 degree matterport powered views of all seats especially bulkheads so I can figure out is there a cutout. Is it big enough for a normal underseat bag, or only a briefcase.
I also want to know which overhead bins are filled with safety equipment (looking at the first 3 rows of the UA transcontinental 757s) so I don’t book those seats if I have overhead luggage.
I also want to know does a seat actually have underseat storage or is it blocked by a bar, equipment, or other things.
Why do you care? You’re a $10 trillion equity partner at every top 100 law firm on earth and you always fly private. Just kidding. How how’s your mom’s basement?
It is shocking they shut it down. I can’t imagine the logic of this from a natural traffic standpoint.
Who is gonna fund all that 360 degree view across hundreds of airlines and aircrafts? Your law firm?
It’s the same logic as DPreview and Anandtech, mainstay of their respective space and widely viewed and respected by their visitors, yet it didn’t take a blink for their new owners to shut them down even though they had adequate audience who are willing to literally donate money monthly to keep their doors open. In case of DPreview it was owned by Amazon, it got brought back under an independent ownership
I’ve been using seatmaps.com, mainly because there is color coding on their maps, and also links to reviews of many of the plane types (including many from OMAAT). AeroLOPA looks slicker but really doesn’t provide much else than the visual.
I think you're a little too positive about aerolopa as a replacement. Sure, you're a very frequent flyer, so you can look at their detailed maps and pick what you want. But lots of people don't automatically realize, for example, that the seats in front of an exit row won't recline. Or that bulkhead seats will have trays in the armrests. Aerolopa won't be as useful for people like that.
For me aeroLOPA is an awesome replacement but it really is crazy, as still now seatguru will rank very highly on google (showing outdated seatmaps), so I'm all with Ben, that they are wasting good money they could have easily kept comming for under 100.000 per year.
This is also systematic as TripAdvisor used to be an awesome site to share advice about interesting spots all over the world. Now it has deteriarated to some site that only tries to sell payed tours to you, I stopped using it years ago.
Well, SeatMaestro with even more outdated data than SeatGuru's is still up and there're actually people uploading new reviews to this date.
Anyways, bye bye SeatGuru.
You know what else that should follow Seatguru shutdown.
ATC and Daylight Saving Time.
In my opinion, this is a huge loss that has been greatly downplayed by Ben. seatguru is completely different from aerolopa. The former actually tells you which variant of an aircraft that operates the flight, while you have no clue which one of the 4 A333 LOPAs will be on your booked EI flight for example.
I've sent them emails from time to time to update seat maps and aircraft on my usual go-to airlines. And I've done the same with aeroLOPA; I actually corresponded with the latter several months ago.
A frequent flier of a particular airline is familiar with the aircraft layouts . I have a strong preference for the first row of economy and expect extra legroom but if that wasn’t the case and legroom is restricted because I couldn’t check seatguru I wouldn’t be bothered so not a huge loss.
…. and now for something a little different as far as aviation news goes ….
Why not? All you have to do is compare the seating chart vs what the airline shows online.
Mildly surprising but as of this morning ExpertFlyer is still show seatguru based seat maps. No comments on particular seats but it is the seatguru seating maps.
If all you do is attack your fellow commenters for ‘adding no value,’ then, aren’t you the one who is truly ‘adding no value.’ Like, you aren’t even doing a ‘meme’… no fun. No substance. John, you’re more ‘the problem’ than anyone else here; yet, you’re always welcome, regardless. Why? Because we don’t need to micromanage or censor each other.
Now, do you have an actual opinion on the loss of SeatGuru, or are you just gonna whine about others?
TravelinWilly, I like to hear from you both. So, what’s your ‘hot take’ on the loss of SeatGuru? I’ll say, I still used it regularly, so it’s a shame. What say you?!
I just went to check this out, and my impressions are:
1) It doesn't show the windows, which is one of the features of aeroLOPA that I love.
2) The reviews don't seem useful.
3) The descriptions are just bananas. I don't see how you could trust anything on this site after reading these.
Example: "United's first class on their Airbus A320-200 is the gold standard in aviation luxury. With an exclusive 12 seats, passengers are immersed in an environment of unparalleled opulence. Luxurious suites, gourmet meals, and a handpicked entertainment selection await. The crew, trained to perfection, delivers a bespoke and discreet service."
Good, it was embarrassing to see how high Google would continue to rank the site even as it continued to display incorrect and outdated seat maps.
I appreciate that they are different. I use them both as sometimes one site does not have one I'm looking for but the other does. I like Aerolopa's visuals and details, but I prefer the ease of searching for the specific flight I'm looking for on seatmaps.com and they often have reviews linked right next to the aircraft details (often from OMAAT). I don't pay any attention to the descriptions as they really don't matter.
We never got an update as to what actually happened with ExpertFlyer. It's still a shell of itself, from my experience... @Ben- any updates or insight here?
provided that Seatguru was actually accurate. So many of their seat maps on smaller airlines are either out of date or not even listed, and they refuse to take customer feedback. That's what happens when you fall asleep by the way side.
@Adam, I basically ignore most of the descriptions since I assumed that’s just marketing speak from the airlines themselves. More interested in the seat layout and which seats are good/bad, and then the reviews. I can also search layout by flight #, which aeroLOPA doesn’t provide.
@Brodie you will have to choose a flight, enter all personal details, and then go into seat selection to see it on airline sites. This is just not feasible when you are shopping around. Not to mention certain airlines have exact the same seat chart for 2 different LOPAs, like 2-2-2 big bench, or 2-2-2 angled flat.
Everyone should stop using tripadvisor. It was once so useful, but now they only want to sell trips etc.
I have deleted every review and every bit today.
Yes, and I’d even say that Seatmaps is better than AeroLOPA.
The website doesn’t look as good, but I like how the seats are color-coded (just like on Seatguru), there’s a virtual 3D view from the seat, and, as you say, there’s detailed info about each seat & its issues. Both sites are good, but I’d give Seatmaps the edge.
The visual is what matters by far the most.
Unless you don't understand how to read simple maps/legends or interpret images... why would care what other people think of the layout?
I liked Seatguru better than the others....I'll live but I'm going to miss it.
Two important features SeatGuru had and unfortunately aeroLOPA doesn't:
1. Easy toggle between variants of the same aircraft through the side menu. AeroLOPA makes you go back to the airline list and select from there, an annoying extra few steps, especially if the airline is low in the alphabet sequence.
2. Individual and searchable seat reviews: I can't count the number of times I found a useful review of a particular seat by doing a simple word search on the page, e.g. 11A, 5K, etc.
Hopefully AeroLOPA will keep the awesome maps and improve #1, which seems like a relatively easy navigation fix. Adding #2 is more of a philosophical issue I guess, I am hardly one looking for more "user engagement", but the seat reviews on SeatGuru were very narrow in scope, straightforward and helpful.
Ben, do you like Aerolopa more than seatmaps.com? I don't find Aerolopa that helpful as it doesn't tell me which seats are better like Seatguru did.
"AeroLOPA makes you go back to the airline list and select from there, an annoying extra few steps, especially if the airline is low in the alphabet sequence." - Huh? Just use the back button and you don't need through the airline list again.
I use aerolopa and I disagree with Ben that the window and seat alignment are accurate. They are NOT. I've flown a bunch of time and what the window position for a particular given seat is not what I expected when I boarded the plane.
At first I thought that it does not matter because airlines today let you pick a seat. Then I thought that it is actually not all the same. Some you can see right when you search while others you can only see after flights are selected and others after you pruchase, so it is probably actually still useful.
Used to be such a great tool, but it's been years (even before 2020) since it last felt accurate / up-to-date.
Doesn't that... make it incrementally less useful? I can see not contributing to it further, but vandalizing what you've contributed accomplishes what, exactly?
Why doesn't OMAAT just recreate SeatGuru on this site and get all the clicks/ad revenue from it? Especially if it doesn't take much to keep it updated/going.
I am so sorry to see the decline of SeatGuru. I was a user from day 1 and for the first decade and a half - it was wonderful to use... and most of the time very accurate. Sad to see it go but lets hope the replacements will continue the trend SeatGuru started 25 years ago,
trip.advisor is stupid. Why not use seat guru as a value added portal into trip advisor.
As it is, I no longer write any reviews for trip advisor that has become a monetised parasitic adjunct to booking dot com etc
AeroLOPA’s visuals are solid and their update at the end of the year should improve seat maps, but no real commentary. I’ve been trying SeatCompare.ai lately — it feels like what SeatGuru could have evolved into if it had kept updating through the years. Hopefully it starts to build out seatmaps too.