Chair Airlines

Chair Airlines is a Swiss leisure carrier based at Zurich, flying holidaymakers from the German-speaking heart of Europe out to the Mediterranean and the Balkans. The network leans towards sun routes and diaspora traffic rather than business connections, so most passengers are travelling for a week or two rather than a Tuesday meeting.

The fleet is a small Airbus narrowbody operation, and the whole aircraft is fitted as one economy cabin. That keeps the proposition simple: pick your route, pick your seat and know that what you see on the map is what the plane actually carries.

Chair flies the Airbus A319 and A320, the two workhorses of the short-to-medium-haul European charter world. Both are single-aisle jets with three seats either side of the aisle, and Chair runs them in an all-economy layout with no separate premium cabin to complicate the choice.

The A320 is the longer of the pair and carries more rows, so it turns up on the busier leisure routes. The A319 is the shorter-bodied sibling and suits thinner or shorter sectors. The seat map for each reflects the real fitted layout, not a generic template.

The cabin is standard European short-haul: fixed-pitch economy seats in a 3-3 arrangement, the same product from the front row to the back. Because there is no business or premium section walled off up front, the difference between seats comes down to position rather than class.

What that means in practice is that legroom, aisle access and how close you sit to the galley or lavatory do the work of separating a good seat from an ordinary one. For a two- or three-hour flight to the sun that is usually enough to base a choice on.

On a single-class Airbus the seats worth asking for are the ones near the exit rows, where the extra space in front of you is real rather than marketing. If Chair sells those separately, they are the pick for taller passengers on the longer sectors.

At the other end, the last few rows sit near the rear galley and lavatory, so recline can be limited and foot traffic higher through the flight. If you want quiet and a quick recline, aim for a mid-cabin row over the aisle. Check the map for the exact rows before you commit.