Sitting in economy can be downright dreadful, but it doesn't have to be. Put these tips to use and you might just enjoy yourself.

Dragging your wheelie down the aisle past business class and premium economy, toward your final resting place in steerage, doesn't have to feel like entering Dante's Ninth Circle of Hell. If you choose your airlines and aircraft wisely and then engineer your way into their coach cabins' best seats, the amount of extra comfort you can get might surprise you.

The most pleasant airplane experience my family of four has had, for instance, was a Continental flight from Barcelona to Newark last December. If you're wondering how on God's green earth a nine-and-a-half-hour confinement on that one-aisle winged sardine can known as a 757 can possibly be described as anything remotely resembling "pleasant," I have one word for you: AVOD.

Audio Video on Demand has now been installed on all of Continental's 757-200s. Each passenger gets his own nine-inch screen with up to 25 movies that can be started, stopped, paused, rewound, or fast-forwarded at will. I watched two movies back-to-back—good films that I'd actually wanted to see in theaters but had missed. The well-chosen computer games and easy-to-use touch-screen controls amounted to the equivalent of a built-in babysitter for the kids. There was even an interactive Berlitz World Traveler program for learning foreign languages.

Thanks to my seat's AC power port, which did not require an adapter, I plugged in my laptop the same way I would at home. And, miraculously for a 757, my knees did not dig into the seat in front of me—apparently because Continental's Spectrum Seat (from BE Aerospace) affords more knee room, not to mention a "comfort cut" tray table and multi-position adjustable headrest.

In times like these, when planes aren't flying full, even if you can't choose your airline and aircraft you can at least choose your seat. My family's outbound flight to Spain did not have AVOD, but it did have something key: empty middle seats. I was able to snag six seats for my family of four. How? The aircraft was a 767—a two-aisle plane with a 2-3-2 seating configuration. My family had been assigned to two of the two-seat rows, but at the airport, when I learned the flight wasn't full, I asked the Continental agent to move us to the aisle seats in two of the three-seat rows. Middle seats tend to be filled starting from the front of the aircraft and moving toward the rear—which means that if your flight isn't full, you're likely to get an empty seat next to you if you request an aisle seat in the center section in the back. My family and I ended up with two three-seat rows to ourselves.

How else can you get comfortable in coach?

Fly at off-peak times
There are more likely to be empty seats, which means you're more likely to be able to arrange for one next to you. Midweek and midday flights tend to be off-peak, though that's not the case for all destinations. Use Orbitz's Flexible Search tool to find the lowest fares within your travel window—these will also be the emptiest flights.