Flying economy is bad enough, but sitting in an unusually cramped or noisy seat is worse. Luckily SeatGuru has the info to keep you from choosing the worst of the worst, becoming surly, and going postal on the flight crew. With its color-coded layouts of major carriers' airplanes, you can avoid seats too close to galleys and lavatories, with limited leg or recline room, or both. Helpful pop-ups explain the ratings.

If your smartphone or PDA browser can support full-sized pages, visit seatguru.com. There's a small screen format available at mobile.seatguru.com. Though it has limited functionality, such as no pop-ups. Hope that airport lounge has free Wi-Fi!