So, I’m trying to book tickets for my wife and I from Denver to Miami, for April 2020. Never a problem in the past to book a flight that guarantees stretch seating. I’m 6’3" and really need it (just had a hip replacement 5 weeks ago).
No site that I have found has allowed you to do a check for the availability of the seat before you book it.
Orbitz doesn’t have it.
Travelocity, nope.
Kayak, uhuh.
United Airlines doesn’t allow it.
Nor does Frontier.
All of them require all of your info including CC info and passenger info before you can pick a seat.
Any recommendations for a site that actual allows you to pick a seat and find out if stretch seating is available BEFORE you book it?
You are mistaken. I don’t know about sites like Kayak or small airlines, but if you go direct to the major airline sites like United they always allow you to pick seats before you pay. There’s no way to see seat availability before you select your flight, so you have to go by trial and error, but you can certainly go back and pick a different flight before you commit to the booking and pay if the seat you want isn’t available. You may have to enter passenger names before you get to the seat selection stage, but not payment details.
If you’re talking about (variously called) Premium Economy, where the seats are the same width as Economy but there is more legroom, that’s a class of seats that you should be able to either select as part of the search criteria, or else refine the search once the flights are selected. Then when you get to seat selection, they only show you that class of seats.
I’ve had no problem doing that on longer flights, although some shorter flights don’t have that class available.
If none of the above suggestions meet your needs, at the very least the DoT requires that airlines let you cancel a flight free of charge within 24 hours after you buy it if it’s more than a week out, so if you commit to something and find out at the seat selection phase that there’s nothing acceptable you can back out at that point.
(Anecdotally, I’ve never seen the “preferred economy” seats – i.e. exit row/&c that they charge a little more for – be taken up before nearly all of the cattle-class seats are gone, and usually not several months out, but YMMV)
I’ve had problems finding those on sites like Expedia. I have seen flights on Expedia that only have economy & first class yet when I go directly to the airline’s site for that exact same flight there are intermediate class(es) of seating, including premium economy, business class, etc.
I recommend going to a site like seatguru.com for more detailed information on the seats on any particular flight, including seat pitch and amenities like power plugs.
I occasionally use Expedia or Orbitz to check relative fares and schedule across airlines, but always book through the airline sites. All the major airlines allow you to see available seats as you are selecting flights (though only some allow you to select seats prior to purchase- United does seat selection as part of the purchase process). My recommendation (if you don’t have significant miles on a carrier) is:
[ul]
[li]Check out flights, prices, and schedules on an aggregator.[/li][li]Once you’ve decided on your flights, go to the airline’s site and join the frequent flyer program- it’s free and makes you more of a person to the airline[/li][li]Open a Seatguru browser window[/li][li]Select you flight on the airline site, and at the appropriate time, select your seat while consulting Seatguru for advice (I find it is about 90% accurate, so use common sense as well)[/li][li]If you can’t get a desirable seat (or aren’t willing to pay a premium), check back periodically on the airline site for better seats opening up (72 and 48 hours are when upgrades generally free up seats)[/li][li]And finally, there is always asking at the gate to see if anything is available (this is where being part of the frequent flyer program helps). Studying the Seatguru layout ahead of time helps if you are offered a seating change (middle seat in an exit row? Does it recline? The gate crew usually isn’t much help with questions like this).[/li][/ul]