Inside the aisle v window seat debate: why travellers can't agree at 30,000 feet

Mal Chenu: Why the spot with easier access to toilets - and overhead lockers - is the way to go.

Seat selection is crucial, especially if, like most people, you're one of the "hell is other people" people.

Travellers' allegiance to aisle or window seats is an implacable shibboleth, like Holden versus Ford, the best James Bond, or pineapple on pizza.

No one says, "I really don't mind." No one goes both ways. Everyone has an inflexible preference, as certain as death, taxes and politicians' travel rorts.

Many silly travel magazine articles have been written on the subject.

I'm on Team Aisle. When you have a prostate the size of an amenities kit, you kinda sorta have to be.

The airlines' business model of providing three bathrooms for 300 passengers and serving them all drinks at the same time is a time-honoured practice that is not going to change.

(Airline seating plans should be required to display the locations of teething babies, VB drinkers in Bintang T-shirts and death metal fans with faulty headphones, but that's a whinge for another day.)

Beyond the loo logic, aisle seats make it easier to see the safety demonstration, in case you need a refresher on how seatbelts work, and you can grab the attention of the cabin crew with a polite eyebrow raise.

Opposing aisle seats are great for couples - close enough to communicate but with enough separation to fume about who left Kevin home alone.

The aisle seat is a must for those with a pathological need to leap to their feet and retrieve their carry-on as soon as wheels hit tarmac.

And equally, the aisle seat enables those of us who like to torment window-seated early leapers by continuing to watch Friends "The One When You Pissed People Off" while they stand, hunched beneath the overhead locker in a stoop-er.

Window seaters like Amy say they like the view, and flying into Rio or Venice or London is nice enough, but I would argue that the unobstructed view of an approaching beverage cart also deserves a World Heritage listing.

Finally, no discussion of this issue would be complete without acknowledging the real heroes of plane travel - the middle seaters.

It's ok to bump these people. They booked a middle seat, so they are clearly masochists.

The Geneva Convention of Travel states middle seaters are entitled to both armrests, but as Hamlet might say, this rule is more honoured in the breach than in the observance.

Then again, the Prince of Denmark is unlikely to be worrying about aisle versus window.

He's up the pointy end, sipping another complimentary Akvavit, and reflecting on how it is better to be in business class than not to be.

Amy Cooper: Why the seat with a bird's-eye view of the world is the best.

If you spot me weeping in a window seat it's not - as Mal might have you believe - induced by the pain of an unattended bladder. Nearly every time I've been moved to tears by a view, it's been through that little oval eye in the sky. That's why I'm window for life. In the right place, at the right time, it's the greatest show on earth.

I'm a frequent crier on the final approach to London's Heathrow, low along the river Thames from the east, past a receiving line of icons: St Paul's Cathedral, Buckingham Palace, Westminster, Harrods. Flying into Sydney from the north will do it, too, especially when dawn bathes the Harbour Bridge and Opera House in rose gold and the dancing water glitters beneath the sun's giant disco ball. Ditto San Francisco Bay, Manhattan Island and Istanbul's blue ribbon of Bosphorus dividing Asia and Europe.

From a window seat, I've witnessed spectacles I'd never otherwise glimpse: remote Arctic ice floes, sapphire lakes hidden high in the Albanian alps, the peaks of North America's Cascades range dotted across Oregon like heaps of spilled salt. Endless oceans and deserts, blanketed forest. The earth's curve and the infinity above. And how about the surreal cinema of clouds? No inflight entertainment can match it. Once, Einstein's face followed me across Spain. Another time a storm cloud shaped like Ryan Gosling formed somewhere over the Top End before morphing, to my disappointment, into a three-headed pug.

Cloudscapes remind you that flying is the trippiest thing you'll ever do. In the bland familiarity of an aircraft cabin, it's easy to forget you're hurtling through the heavens, defying gravity at 30,000 feet and 800kmh. The fact you're there at all is a modern miracle.

If you're a closet aviation nerd like me, window seats also reveal geeky delights like flap configuration and watching the engines' reverse thrust deploy as you land. And when at last there's nothing to see out there, you can rest your head on the wall and sleep undisturbed - unlike Mal, stranded on the hard shoulder of the trolley superhighway, buffeted by bathroom traffic, his extremities at the mercy of the beverage cart.

There should be a special safety demonstration for aisle sitters: "In the unlikely event of falling asleep, tie your feet to the underside of the seat in front of you to prevent waking up maimed. And don't bother fastening your seatbelt low and tight around the hips, as you'll be unclipping it at least once an hour when your neighbours wake you up to visit the toilet."

No wonder a survey this year showed 69 per cent of Aussie travellers favour a window seat. But aisle wasn't bottom choice. In various polls, just one per cent prefer the dreaded spot in between. It could be worse, Mal - you could be Malcolm in the middle.