The Most Spacious Airline Seats in the USA

The comfort of an airplane seat can greatly influence a flight experience for my partner and me, despite our differing views on what constitutes spaciousness.

Standing at 6 feet 6 inches, he prioritizes legroom. Insufficient space leads to his knees pressing into the seat in front or his legs extending into the aisle, which can be hazardous. Conversely, I focus more on seat width. I cherish my personal space and dislike shoulder-to-shoulder contact or thigh rubbing with strangers at cruising altitude. For both of us, a few extra inches in either direction can make a significant difference in comfort.

If you seek additional room to stretch out, knowing which airlines provide the most legroom and widest seats can greatly improve your travel experience. Here are some airlines that consistently offer generous space.

Leading airlines with the most legroom in economy class

A recent analysis conducted by Upgraded Points, a travel research website, examined which airlines provide the most legroom in economy class. To determine the average legroom for each airline, Upgraded Points assessed aircraft across the 10 busiest domestic routes for each carrier (as the type of plane influences the available space) and focused on which offered the most seat pitch (the distance between a point on one seat and the corresponding point on the seat in front) on average. The top performers were:

1. JetBlue: 32.3 inches
2. Southwest Airlines: 32 inches
3. Alaska Airlines/Delta Air Lines (tied): 31.8 inches
4. American Airlines: 31 inches
5. United Airlines: 30.2 inches

In business class, pinpointing which airlines offer the most legroom is more challenging without additional criteria. For this article, we are excluding seats that are angled flat or fully flat, focusing instead on those that merely recline and are more typical on domestic routes. To gather the data, we utilized information from SeatGuru (a site that enables users to compare seat specifications across major airlines and their aircraft) to evaluate the average legroom for each aircraft type or across various types within the fleets of airlines that operate flights under six hours within the U.S. The top airlines are:

1. Alaska Airlines: 40.3 inches on average
2. Hawaiian Airlines: 37 inches across all aircraft
3. American Airlines: 36.8 inches on average
4. Delta Air Lines: 36.7 inches on average
5. United Airlines: 35.6 inches on average

Leading airlines with the widest seats in economy class

We also utilized SeatGuru to gather data on seat width for all aircraft operated by the top 10 airlines in the United States on their domestic short-haul routes and calculated the average. In cases where seat width varied for a particular aircraft type (such as the American Airlines Embraer ERJ-175 Layout 1, which ranges from 18.2 to 19.3 inches depending on the plane), we opted for the lower measurement. The top airlines are:

1. JetBlue: 18.1 inches on average
2. Delta Air Lines: 17.64 inches on average
3. Alaska Airlines: 17.53 inches on average
4. Hawaiian Airlines: 17.5 inches on average
5. Southwest Airlines: 17.4 inches on average

For business class, the airlines with the widest seats based on SeatGuru data are:

1. Alaska Airlines: 21 inches across all aircraft
2. Delta Air Lines: 20.54 inches on average
3. American Airlines: 20 inches on average
4. United Airlines: 19.5 inches on average
5. Hawaiian Airlines: 18.5 inches across all aircraft