If you ever searched “best seats on a Boeing 777” before booking a flight, you probably landed on SeatGuru.
For more than two decades, the color-coded seat map site was the holy grail for travelers who wanted to avoid bad seats, missing windows, and non-reclining rows.
But after 24 years online, SeatGuru is gone.
Type in the familiar URL today and you’ll be redirected to TripAdvisor — with no explanation, no goodbye message, and no replacement.
For millions of frequent flyers, it feels like losing an old friend.
A Sad Farewell to the Seat Map Site We All Used
SeatGuru launched back in 2001, long before airlines began charging for preferred seats or extra legroom.
It was revolutionary at the time: a clean, color-coded map for every aircraft type.
Green meant a good seat, yellow warned of limited recline or other quirks, and red shouted avoid at all costs.
At its peak, SeatGuru covered over 700 aircraft across more than 100 airlines.
Flyers could look up everything from power outlets and window alignment to lavatory proximity and seat pitch.
Even casual travelers learned to check SeatGuru before every long-haul trip — especially when booking economy.
TripAdvisor purchased the site in 2007, a move that initially made sense.
It fits perfectly within TripAdvisor’s travel ecosystem, helping visitors plan their journeys from hotel to flight.
For a while, SeatGuru remained a respected, highly trafficked tool. Then… silence.
How a Great Tool Slowly Died
By the early 2020s, loyal users began noticing the cracks.
Seat maps were out of date, sometimes showing aircraft that no longer existed or configurations that had changed years earlier. Newer aircraft layouts — especially for airlines that had refreshed their cabins — were missing entirely.
SeatGuru’s last major update came in early 2020.
After that, nothing. Airlines evolved, seats changed, and passengers kept pointing out errors, but updates never arrived.
TripAdvisor didn’t pull the plug right away.
Instead, the site was left online but neglected — still ranking high on Google, still drawing clicks, but providing increasingly unreliable information.
As one aviation blogger put it, “TripAdvisor let SeatGuru die of neglect.”
That’s exactly what happened. On October 31, 2025, without warning, SeatGuru finally shut down for good.
Visitors were automatically redirected to TripAdvisor’s homepage — a generic travel booking site that offered none of the functionality that made SeatGuru beloved.
The shutdown sparked an immediate wave of frustration among frequent flyers.
For many, SeatGuru wasn’t just a website. It was part of their pre-flight ritual.
Why TripAdvisor Pulled the Plug
TripAdvisor hasn’t released an official statement, but the reasons aren’t hard to guess.
SeatGuru didn’t make much money.
The site’s only revenue came from basic display ads, and the number of people checking seat maps isn’t exactly a gold mine for conversions.
Updating hundreds of aircraft layouts across more than 100 airlines takes time, effort, and expertise — all for a tool that didn’t directly sell hotels or tours.
TripAdvisor’s priorities have shifted over the years. The company now focuses on experiences, restaurant bookings, and monetized travel reviews.
Maintaining a free niche tool that helps flyers choose seats doesn’t fit that model.
It’s a familiar story in the online travel world: big companies buy smaller, beloved sites, then quietly stop supporting them. Eventually, they disappear.
It happened to DPreview, Amazon’s once-legendary camera review site, and AnandTech, a cornerstone of computer journalism. SeatGuru is now the latest casualty of corporate cleanup.
For many travelers, it’s not just about losing data — it’s about losing trust.
As one commenter put it, “TripAdvisor used to be about travelers helping travelers. Now it’s just about selling you something.”
Flyers Aren’t Taking It Well
Within hours of the shutdown, frequent-flyer communities lit up with angry posts.
Some accused TripAdvisor of “destroying a perfectly good site.”
Behind the jokes lies real frustration. Travelers had spent years contributing seat reviews, helping one another avoid the dreaded non-reclining row or misaligned window.
SeatGuru’s comment sections were crowdsourced gold — little tips that could make or break a 12-hour flight.
That collective wisdom is now gone.
Yes, there are forums like FlyerTalk where you can still dig up seat advice, but it’s not the same.
SeatGuru was clean, visual, and easy to use. It turned anxiety about a long-haul flight into excitement about getting “the perfect seat.”
As one reader summarized on a forum: “I can live without it — but I’m really going to miss it.”
The Tools You Should Use Now
So where should flyers turn now that SeatGuru has gone dark? Thankfully, a few worthy replacements have stepped up — though none capture exactly what made SeatGuru special.
AeroLOPA
The British-based site has become the top choice for aviation geeks and frequent flyers alike.
AeroLOPA offers ultra-detailed, high-resolution diagrams of aircraft cabins for dozens of airlines.
You can zoom in, see exactly where the windows line up, and even distinguish between different sub-variants of the same aircraft type.
Its downside? It doesn’t tell you which seats are good or bad. There’s no color coding or commentary. You’ll need to know what to look for — exit rows, bulkheads, missing recline — and draw your own conclusions.
Still, for visual detail and accuracy, AeroLOPA is unmatched.
SeatMaps.com
If you miss SeatGuru’s simple traffic-light system, SeatMaps.com is the closest match.
It includes user reviews, color-coded ratings, and even a virtual 3D seat view. Some users prefer it to AeroLOPA for that reason.
The interface isn’t as sleek, but it’s practical.
ExpertFlyer
For serious road warriors, ExpertFlyer remains an invaluable paid tool.
It doesn’t replace SeatGuru’s visual maps, but it provides real-time seat availability, alerts when better seats open up, and detailed aircraft data.
It’s for those who want to track the best seats before everyone else does.
There’s no perfect replacement yet, but combining AeroLOPA’s visuals with SeatMaps’ color codes gets you close.
Bottom Line
SeatGuru wasn’t flashy, but it worked.
It turned travelers into informed flyers and made countless long-haul journeys more bearable.
For 24 years, it was part of the pre-flight ritual: search your flight number, find your seat, and hope for a green square.
Now it’s gone — quietly redirected into oblivion by the very company that was supposed to preserve it.
TripAdvisor may call it a business decision, but to millions of travelers, it feels more like a betrayal. In the words of one disappointed flyer, “They didn’t just shut down a website. They killed a tradition.”
So long, SeatGuru.
Thanks for helping us dodge the bad seats — and for making flying just a little better.
