AirlineExpert.com was created by Alexander Lee and Elizabeth Liu in late 2002. In their extensive professional and personal travels, the founders have spent many hours in the air flying various international airlines and collected many cocktail napkins of notes about various airline seats. Noticing the growing stack of cocktail napkins of notes on the desirability of various airline seats, and Alex suggested that they should create a computerize system to track this information, thus leading to the birth of AirlineExpert.com.

The first seatmap created was the British Airways Boeing 747-400, for a trip the family took to Madrid in late 2002 on $20 tickets for Premium Economy class. Just before boarding, the British Airways gate agent told us that we have new seat assignments, and wrote the seat numbers on our boarding pass. Alex immediately realized that we have been upgraded to Business Class, as the seatmap was still fresh in his mind having drawn the seatmap pixel by pixel himself just days before.

With frequent long haul trips to Asia, Europe and the rest of the world, the AirlineExpert family has traveled to well over 30 countries and flown millions of miles on many of the world's top airlines.

Flying is not status quo
The airline industry is continously reshaping itself while undergoing significant changes. Airline bankruptcies and proliferation of the so-called Low Cost Carriers (LCC) are forcing airline executive to continously attempt to differentiate their product. The offering is therefore constantly changing: More legroom in coach, Introduction of domestic Transcontinental premium service, Elimination of first class on less profitable long haul markets, More efficient planes as such as the Airbus 380, A350XWB, and Boeing 787 as well as the increased use of Regional Jets. The average traveler needs constantly updated information regarding the best seat choices.

Leveraging technology
With the intuitive color-coded graphical seat map, AirlineExpert.com is able to deliver detailed information on each seat. With all the hassels of flying: TSA secutiry mandates, Crowded airports, More and more Airline fees, Little or no food on the plane; the only remaining choice while flying are which airline to fly, and which seat to choose. Going above the standard "Window or Aisle" question, AirlineExpert.com users become well-informed travelers. AirlineExpert even depict the actual window locations on most of the seat maps, to ensure that AirlineExpert.com users are never in the dark, and able to significantly improve their in-flight experience with a choice seat.

Listening to our users
Understanding that our growth depends on our ability to listen to the user community, we have continued to add coverage to the airlines we cover. Currently, we cover over 60 airlines with more than 350 highly detailed seatmaps. To serve our international users, we have also added Alta Vista's BabelFish translation service to all our pages. Our users can access the seat map information in nine different languages, bringing the information closer to them.

Flying into the future
AirlineExpert.com will continue to add seat maps for additional airlines, particularly those serving the growing Pacific-rim market, as well as continously adding and updating information for other major carriers.