Erykah got it all wrong.
If you have the chance to pick your seat on a plane, pick the aisle.
Planes are massive vessels of metal that transport you and several hundred other people from one destination to another. You may have a choice for which of those seats you get to occupy for the duration of your journey, you may not. But if you do, an aisle seat as close to the front as you can get is ideal.
There is an ease of movement that only the aisle seat can offer. Regardless of the state of consciousness or level of kindness within the people on your row, you’ll never have to depend on them to get up and do what you need to do. Have to pee? You can get up and go without a word to anyone. Need to get something out of the overhead bin? Just stand up, babe. No one is between you and where you need to go because the aisle is yours for the taking.
The flexibility of leg room is unparalleled. It’s very likely that you, dear reader, are taller than me (a towering 155.5 cm). So I can imagine adequate leg room is even more useful to you than it is to me. While this ultimately comes down to the exact model and configuration of your plane, aisle seats generally feel far less confined than the middle and window seats. Stretching is more available to you and the risk of getting too stiff is easily mitigated by the ability to just go for a little walk to the bathroom to move your body and encourage blood flow.
Now there are certainly less favorable aspects of the aisle seat. Thankfully, the largest one is reduced to the boarding process and doesn’t resurface again for the remainder of your flight: getting hit by people and their bags. The aisles are small and people get easily flustered while traveling. This results in people simply not being aware enough to know when they or their bags are bumping into people as they’re boarding the plane since they’re desperately trying to find their seat, store their carry on, and sit down to catch their breath. Will you get hit by something in the aisle seat? Yes, dear. Yes, you will. But can that be avoided? Perhaps. If it bothers you a lot, you can wait towards the end of boarding to get on the plane. Or you can simply lean inward when you see a particularly distracted fellow passenger clambering down the aisle towards you.
As with all things, the aisle seat has its pros and cons. But I, for one, hope to always be found in the spaciousness and freedom of an aisle seat. I hope this encouraged you to do the same.
Bon voyage!
