Pegasus Airlines

Pegasus is Turkey's big low-cost carrier, flying from Istanbul's Sabiha Gökçen airport on the Asian side of the city to a network that stretches across Turkey, Europe, the Gulf, the Caucasus and Central Asia. The model is orthodox low-cost: a cheap base fare, everything else sold separately, and aircraft that earn their keep by carrying about as many people as the type allows.

That last part is what matters at the seat map. Every published Pegasus layout is a single economy cabin at high density, and the airline sells seat selection by position, so the practical question is never which cabin but which row, and whether the extra-legroom rows justify the add-on for your sector length.

The single-aisle Airbus family does most of the work: the A320 in two fits, one standard and one squeezed harder, the A320neo matching the denser fit in a newer airframe, and the A321neo carrying the longest and tightest cabin in the fleet. A Boeing 737-800 rounds out the published set with the same all-economy formula and a seat a touch narrower than its Airbus stablemates.

The A321neo deserves its own sentence. It runs a very long economy cabin at a pitch that stays snug from the first row to the last, front bulkhead included, so the mid-cabin exit rows are the only place the airframe gives anything back, and they are priced accordingly.

The cabin is slimline seats, quick turnarounds and buy-on-board catering, tuned for sectors of one to four hours. Pitch on the denser fits is tight even by low-cost standards, which is exactly the deal the fare advertises: the base seat gets you there, and comfort is sold by the row.

Because the baseline is tighter here than on gentler airlines, the gap between a standard row and a paid one is wider than the fee suggests. On a two-hour hop the standard seat does the job. On a longer run to the Gulf or Central Asia, the exit-row charge starts to look like the cheapest comfort on the booking page.

Pay for position on anything beyond a short hop: the exit rows carry the legroom, the front rows are off the aircraft while the back is still standing, and the deepest rows queue for the lavatories and then for the door. On the dense A320 fits the row numbers jump around the exits, so the final row number overstates how long the cabin really is.

Window watchers should choose precisely rather than roughly. The 737-800 and the A321neo both carry a few window seats with a blank panel or a badly placed frame, and nothing on the booking grid warns you which they are.