The holy grail for long haul flights that isn’t the high prices of business class, the savior of the lucky taller traveler on some 12 hour flight. I’m talking about the exit row seat. These special seats are located where the plane has its emergency exit doors and in most cases has way over double the leg room of a standard seat!

Airlines see exit row seat occupants as those that can help with opening the door in an emergency. So this rules out minors, elderly and those with handicaps. Up until recent years exit row seats didn’t cost extra and where first in first served, now though on most popular airliners you have to pay.

Luckily if no one books an exit row seat upon check in you can get it for free or they will announce it prior to boarding then its a scramble to get to the desk first to grab it.

It’s a form of discrimination but honestly I wish that airliners did it based on height, i myself is a tall male and i can say this for all tall people that when we see a short person enjoying an exit row you can only think “wtf really??!”.

Criteria for exit row seat allocation

If an airliner had exit row seats available firstly to a certain criteria such as 6 ft 3 and over then I cant see how shorter people can be annoyed?! Flying as a tall person sucks and can be painful, please have mercy. Even having the criteria I would still be happy to pay a bit more for the exit row seat but anything from about $50 is robbery, Qantas charge $90 for the flights I checked.

It comes down to the market though, if people are paying $100+ for the premium that is an exit row seat than airlines of course will allow this. No airline will turn away from money over customer satisfaction that is putting priority on tall passengers getting an exit row seat.

Money talks but im sure tall people will agree with me that having criteria or priority given to taller people in exit row seats would be an excellent way to get taller travelers on your planes.