Should I Really Have to Babysit my Airline Seat Assignments

We have had flights booked to Hawaii for almost a year now. I find myself always having to check our seat assignments to make sure everything is still set. Checked the other night and all was fine, nothing changed, tonight looked and seats on one of our flights had been dropped. We had no seats assigned and pickings were slim. I have had to do this several times throughout the last year, constantly watching and re-picking seats. Is this really necessary? Can't they pick a flight, a time and equipment and stick with it?

Its unreasonable to expect nothing to change for a year.
OTOH, its unfair to expect passengers to stay on top of all their changes w-no notice.

They're good at taking reservations, just not keeping them... per Jerry Seinfeld (another thread).


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I've never seen the seat assignments change unless the flight number also changes, and that seems to happen frequently when booking a long time in advance. It's good to keep checking.

This has happened to us a lot, and we find it very annoying. Especially when we have paid for extra legroom on longer flights. A number of times, our airline-assigned new seats are NOT the extra-legroom seats, and we have to call in to complain and get them changed. I too dislike the babysitting, but find it necessary these days.

sadly .. yes. You should continuously check them. I'm a Prem Exec on United and for the past couple of years.. and the seats I have selected, when booking online, have mysteriously been "changed" on different occasions. My guess would be non-rev employees changing into your seat or having "employee friends" changing them into the "better" seats

dioxide45 said:

We have had flights booked to Hawaii for almost a year now. I find myself always having to check our seat assignments to make sure everything is still set. Checked the other night and all was fine, nothing changed, tonight looked and seats on one of our flights had been dropped. We had no seats assigned and pickings were slim. I have had to do this several times throughout the last year, constantly watching and re-picking seats. Is this really necessary? Can't they pick a flight, a time and equipment and stick with it?

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The alternate could be that seat assignments for tickets below full fare / gold status are 'assigned upon check-in' unless you pay for allocated seat assignment when you buy the tickets. This is how BA and many other European Carriers work.
It can work well as it lowers the expectations of everyone and it means that when seat assignments are necessary, for example, I often find when I go to look for 3 - 4 seats on Jet Blue later in the booking time line, that the only option is four middle seats. Annoying if you are all adults, impossible if you are parents with infants. The BA approach means such problems are resolved by the airline without dissapointing those that have to move so others can be safely assigned with part of their party

(and don't get me started on the whole well we have your party assigned as 2 seats in row 12 and two seats in row 30. Well I know that works and that dad can sit with one and mom with the other but then the little ones want to go back and forth to see both parents and the parents need to go back and forth because they didn't pack two coolers, two snack bags, to bags of toys and distractions etc as carry on policy does not allow it )

I've come to the conclusion / decision that seat assignment generally sucks these days so lowered my expectation to having a seat on the plane and hoping I am not sharing it with an oversized pax in the adjoining seat.

If you want to throw some money at it, I think there are some web sites that will monitor your seat assignments for you. I know I beta tested one some years ago that would let you give your seat preferences (like prefer aisle, as close to the front as possible, excluding the row in front of the exit row) and it would either notify or automatically move you if a better seat became available.

I've learned to frequently check not just my seat assignments, but the flights themselves, to make sure things stay on track. Not doing so risks a lot of hassle, and potentially missed flights.

Earlier this year we went to the Yellowstone Park area for a two week trip. It involved a week in a timeshare near the park, followed by a second week in motels as we drove all over the Montana/Wyoming/South Dakota area. This lengthy itinerary allowed us to plan to spend our final night in the Old Faithful Lodge, as a farewell to enjoying the Park over this excellent vacation. The next morning we would enjoy breakfast in the Lodge restaurant, and see the geyser one more time, before making our leisurely way up to Bozeman, Montana, for our flight home.

Somewhere along the way, Alaska Airlines decided to radically change the flight time of our return flight, from a convenient late-afternoon departure, to one leaving at 7:00 AM. Not only did they not tell me about the schedule change (another serious bone of contention), but in order to make that flight, we'd have had to get up in the middle of the night to check out, drive to the airport and turn in our rental car, and still leave time to make it through security, and then board on time. It was completely unworkable.

Thanks to a creative Alaska ticketing agent, we were able to reschedule to a better departure time, although it changed our nonstop flight to a one-stop with a 90 minute layover. It wasn't the best plan, but at least it saved our final night in the park. What a PITA.

Since then I'm diligent in checking frequently, to make sure things stay on track. Part of the travel game, I suppose.

Dave

We flew to San Francisco last Saturday to celebrate my 60th birthday. We flew business class and I had our seats all booked. When we checked in the agent told us our seats changed because it was a different plane and we would not be sitting together. When we got on the plane it was chaos with everyone trying to change their seats so they could sit with the person they were flying with. Eventually, everyone did get to sit with who they wanted to, but the flight attendants were going crazy because no one was where they were supposed to be. I don't know how they screwed up the seating so bad! Hopefully, we will not have this problem again when we fly home tommorrow.

^ yup.. aircraft changes throw everything out the window... flyertalk taught me to be hypersensitive to flight routing and even tail numbers of United's 777 and 767 fleets. For a few years I flew quarterly to Sao Paulo Brasil and during certain schedules they would fly 777 and other "seasons" 767. Because of the seating configs a change in plane would reduce the size of business seats.. and if you were on an upgrade you'd find your business seat gone and would be issued an economy plus ticket at the gate. To add to the confusion, there was a time when not all of United's 777 fleet were converted to lie-flat business class. So tracking tail numbers were the only way to try and get the good business seats

I book flights well in advance and check the seat assignments about once s week - why? Because I have to, otherwise we would always be sitting in row 33 in front of the washrooms! I don't know why it happens but it does - a lot.

Thanks for the reminder. We had this happen to us with Alaska for an upcoming trip. We had direct flights to the Big Island, but now our outbound flight is through Seattle. It was either that or fly out the next day. No way did we want to lose a day in Hawaii. They did give us 8,000 miles for the inconvenience of having to leave earlier than originally scheduled and arriving a little later.

I better check our seat assignments again. Less than 30 days to go!:whoopie:

Would you prefer Southwest, with no assigned seats at all?


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Talent312 said:

Its unreasonable to expect nothing to change for a year.
OTOH, its unfair to expect passengers to stay on top of all their changes w-no notice.

They're good at taking reservations, just not keeping them... per Jerry Seinfeld (another thread).


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I guess I've been lucky and I don't ever check up on seat assignments. True, it's just not that important to me, but so far I have never had the Seinfeld pseudo-reservation issue. So long as I'm on the flight I booked, or a reasonable facsimile, I'm happy.

Ken555 said:

Would you prefer Southwest, with no assigned seats at all?

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Yes! I love Southwest's style of (no) seat assignments.

I have to say I have (don't let this be a jinx) had AA change my seat assignments. Just checked my flights for Tuesday and they are just as when I booked the flights. Even my 16 year old asked me NOT to book him on Southwest because the "adults" push and shove him out of the way to get their seats.

Ken555 said:

Would you prefer Southwest, with no assigned seats at all?


Sent from my iPad

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They don't fly to Hawaii.

The problem is no notice at all. Seats just drop. What happens to everyone else that doesn't bother checking at all until they go to checkin at the airport counter?

I always babysit my seat assignments that I've selected as sometimes the flight numbers don't change, but the aircraft (and therefore the seating configuration) does.

The worst is when you pay for your seat and they start their hi-jinx with the seats you've paid for. Airtran did that to us once and it was a hassle to get our seats fixed, but eventually they did change to what we wanted without an added fee.

Even if you book well in advance, babysit your seat assignments, and have everything right, you can get hit by this at the last minute.

Earlier this year, Iberia changed our TNF-MAD-MIA flights so that instead of a 3 hour layover in Madrid, we had a 45 minute layover. I made sure all seats were together again, near the front of the plane, and checked with the airline to make sure the layover wasn't too tight. They insisted it was fine and wouldn't change it. Needless to say, the flight out of Tenerife was late (and instead of making up time in the air, they lost even more time!) and our gates were at opposite sides of the (HUGE!) Madrid airport. We sprinted from one side of the airport to the other (with three kids in tow) and arrived at our gate 10 minutes before departure, but they had already released our seats and refused to let us on the plane. The only route they could find to get us to Miami was connecting through Lima, Peru. They put us near the back of the plane from Madrid to Lima, in three separate rows, with kids 9, 7 and 2. Some passengers were willing to trade seats and we were able to get four seats that were close, but one was still several rows away. My wife sat next to the 2 year old, with the 7 year old and 9 year old close. I was in a middle seat a few rows away, so I was no help to her.

British Airways only lets you book your seats 24 hours ahead (unless you are elite or something of course) unless you pay for it. In our case it was $32 each way. I realized that, if we didn't do it, I would have to do something 23 hours and 57 minutes ahead or so. Flights were Heathrow to Istanbul and back from Rome to Heathrow. We paid as we would be on tour 24 hours before the return. BUT......it says they reserve the right to change your seat if they have to - they'll give you your money back but..... We'll see how we do!

lvhmbh said:

British Airways only lets you book your seats 24 hours ahead (unless you are elite or something of course) unless you pay for it. In our case it was $32 each way. I realized that, if we didn't do it, I would have to do something 23 hours and 57 minutes ahead or so. Flights were Heathrow to Istanbul and back from Rome to Heathrow. We paid as we would be on tour 24 hours before the return. BUT......it says they reserve the right to change your seat if they have to - they'll give you your money back but..... We'll see how we do!

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AirTran also allows one to select a seat ahead of time for a fee. We always did that, but also had to continually babysit the seat assignments as they too were often dropped.

Check within 24 hours of flight time. Often you'll see more seating options open up.

When we went to Aruba in Feb., we were on the same reservation. When I went online to check in for our return flight home, they had broken the reservation into two different ones. I just selected seats together for our flights. I didn't think it was a problem until we landed in Chicago and discovered that our flight to Boston was canceled because of a blizzard. I had been booked on a flight the next day (silver preferred member), and DH was booked 2 days after that. Luckily the customer service agent got us both on the flight I had been booked on - and we were sitting together.

WE always buy our tickets (FF & $) 9-12 months out. Often our children are seated away from us by the time we actually check-in. Sometimes we have to wait until we get to the gate for the problem to be fixed. And even then we have to rely on the kindness of strangers.

Last trip, I was traveling alone with my two little ones. We got up at 3am in Vancouver, changed planes twice with an 8 hour layover in Seattle. By the time we got to the 3rd leg of our trip (Seattle to Honolulu) we were all pretty tired. The agent was able to seat us together in the very last row in front of the bathrooms. I told her if my choice was to sit in front of the bathrooms or sit apart from my kids, I choose to sit apart from my kids.* She was so sweet. She got us decent seats together.

Just for the record I really wouldn't have done that.

Other passengers are usually very understanding about switching seats so that you can be near your kids. Or maybe it's just the way I ask.

"Would you prefer to sit next to my 3 year old, or would you mind switching seats with me?"

MichaelColey said:

"Would you prefer to sit next to my 3 year old, or would you mind switching seats with me?"

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Ha! I love it!