Middle Of Plane Is Best

If you’re flying coach on a widebody plane, consider asking for a seat in the middle section. You improve your chances of sitting next to an empty seat, and you get a better view of the movie. (That, however, is no guarantee that the movie will be worth seeing.)

Sweat equity: Budget-minded guests at the Luneburg Heath Vacation Club in northern Germany can opt to pay for their stay the old-fashioned way: by earning it.

The club, located in a lush country setting between Berlin and Hamburg, maintains an elaborate “Muscle Power Price List” of jobs, from helping in the kitchen to building birdhouses, for guests who want to pitch in and work to cover their tab.

The charge for a couple and a small child occupying a full-service condo-style home for a week might be an agreement to clean three horse stalls and provide six hours of weeding in the club’s vegetable fields.

Painting a hundred yards of fence is worth two hours of horseback riding; a fruit-canning session could pay for a $150 cosmetic treatment. You strike your own deal in advance.

Open year-round, the club has 83 housing units - individual rooms and cottages; guests can cook for themselves or choose a meal plan. For information, write Ferienclub Luneburger Heide of Gohrde, OT Sarenseck, D-29473, Gohrde, Germany.

Fast food: How healthy are all those yummy airline meals? It depends. The Washington-based Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine found wide variation recently when it checked the availability of low-fat and vegetarian meals on six major airlines and at 19 airports in the United States and Canada.

United scored tops among airlines surveyed, offering a vegetarian “steak” and pasta with just 3 percent fat, a vegetarian ravioli with 9 percent fat and a mixed-grain dish with 16 percent fat - all with no cholesterol. The best offerings from other airlines had a minimum of 28 percent fat. Following United in descending order were TWA, Continental, USAir, American and Northwest; Delta declined evaluation, according to Dr. Andy Nicholson, of the physicians committee.