Seat selection

More airlines are allowing passengers to select their own seat either at the time of booking or during the online check-in.

So what should you look out for if you have a choice of seats?

If you are landing in airport known for lengthy immigration queues, then sit as far forward as possible.

Stay away from galleys and toilets, you may be served dinner first, but the noise will keep you up all night

Seats in front of toilets, bulkheads, closets (fixed partitions known as monuments) may have limited recline.

Seats in the front of the cabin are usually where the babies are.

The aisle seats just aft of the galley tend to get hit by the meal carts as they get wheeled through. It's fine if you don't mind your toes being sliced off.

The cabin behind the engines tends to be noisier.

As to which part of the cabin is the most stable, I'd say above the wings, but the jury's out on this one.

Sometimes with the taper (not tapir) in the very aft of the cabin, the seats are doubles instead of triples and if you are single, you have a high chance of sitting next to another single... (I can't take credit for this suggestion)

Emergency exit rows have more leg room. But more often than not the window seat leg room is eaten away by the big bulge in the door that holds the slide raft.

There are some hard core websites out there like www.seatguru.com which have seat maps of different aircraft types of different airlines and point out which are good seats and which seats have potential issues, like "seat 7A and B have a shared magazine pocket".