Vol. I · Issue 15
A window seat, and time to think.
Seat 5A is a small editorial column. Each issue begins with a real question a traveler asked in the last twenty-four hours — and reflects outward, from seat 5A, at 34,000 feet.
Featured essay · 4 min
The Year of Empty Squares
On looking for a seat that isn't there.
Read the essay →
The Selection
At an unannounced hour each day, we sweep the last twenty-four — the real-time questions travelers are asking right now.
Most are practical, and practical is not what we do here. The handful that carry a second life — a routing puzzle that is really about how we spend our weeks; a downgrade that is really about disappointment — are the ones we keep, and reimagine. Some days that number is zero. On those days we publish nothing.
Read the method →Previously selected
The Signal ↗- № 143 min
Overflight
For decades, the shortest way from Tel Aviv was the long way around.
- № 133 min
The Permission to Leave
In Australia, the border can close behind you before you have crossed it.
- № 123 min
The Second Itinerary
Your cabin bag lands in Kenya without you, and you can watch it happen.
- № 113 min
Two Pockets
At the border we are asked to choose, briefly, who we have been all along.
- № 103 min
For Sifnos
Eight hundred thousand points becomes a way of saying, I will be there.
- № 093 min
The Wrong Side of the Scale
For some passports, love is counted as a liability.
- № 083 min
The Sponsor
After a refusal, we try to turn love into paperwork that will be believed.
- № 073 min
Three Hundred Euros
What an airline thinks your suitcase is worth, and what it actually contains.
- № 063 min
The Unscheduled Stop
When loss meets the terms and conditions, grief is asked to wait its turn.
- № 053 min
A Paper Triangle
On losing the one document that lets you live between two countries.
- № 043 min
The Mountain Keeps Its Appointment
We travel a long way to stand before something that will not be looking back.
- № 034 min
The Cabin That Isn't There
A year of empty business class between Berlin and Bangkok says more about the map than the plane.
- № 023 min
The Unlogged Miles
We want the past to count, even if only as points in an account.
- № 013 min
The Two-Hour Rule
Why some travelers measure distance not by how far they can go, but by how little they will move before the leaving starts.