Really? Well, that’s the advice from 500px:
You should always, ALWAYS ask for a window seat. Forget the trouble of not being able to get up to go to the bathroom, or the inability to stretch your legs.
Their argument is that you might just catch something as good as the 35 photos they share in their post. And look, those photos are good:
Pragtig. Mooi. But the fact remains that there are around 100,000 commercial flights each day, and the 500px collators have managed to gather just 35 examples of amazing window seat photography (and don’t get me wrong, they are amazing).
There’s a problem with this. I’ve been doing some rudimentary calculations and assuming an average of 30 rows of seats per plane (seems reasonable, ne?), that’s 60 window seats per flight, meaning 6 million window seats per day. Even taking into account that not every flight will give the opportunity for amazing window seat photography (most routes bypass volcanoes altogether) and that not every amazing window seat photograph will be submitted to 500px, that’s not a great rate of return, is it? Because every window seat will definitely come with the trouble of not being able to get up to go to the bathroom, and the inability to stretch your legs.
So no, 500 px. I do appreciate the work of your contributors, but I’ll live the window seat dream vicariously through them while choosing to enjoy the (slightly) more comfortable leg room in my middle block aisle seat. (That’s a 6000 miles… tip right there.)