double booking seat selection

[KLOS]

I am a Exec Club member ( modest bronze/ ruby) and on a recent flight chose my seat 7 days in advance. I like 25 F on the 777 ( no one kicking the back). After checking in and waiting in Departure , I was summoned and asked to accept another seat 16 H which is a nice seat with (no one in front). I was told that 25F had been double booked. I was quite ok with switching but I can't believe the reason given. Firstly even if I and someone else were choosing on line exactly contemporaneously, surely the computer can't double allocate. There is only one passenger seat next to 25F, 25E , while 25D is a crew seat. I reckon the person allocated 25E was separated from a partner and they requested to to be seated together. The clue is in the fact that nothing was menionedt to me at check in.
I have seen quite a few instances of people who wait until check-in and are then separated asking others who often have either paid in advance or have Ex Club status to accommodate them. On the flight , I took a stroll along the aisle and it was obvious that the people in 25 were a couple.
Can a 'Techie' out there confirm that it is not possible to double select a seat

Thanks

[Hotel Tango]

Yes, of course they just wanted to accommodate the couple. It comes down that basically they won't tell you the TRUTH in case you make a fuss. So they come out with the bog standard:

- Double booking

- Computer glitch

- Operational reasons

If you have good reason to select your seat, you should mention that you specifically chose that seat and that nothing was said at check-in.

On one occasion, an airline tried to split my wife and I in order to accommodate another couple! I told them to find another solution. They did

[Heathrow Harry]

Last year had some real trouble on Delta to/from Atlanta - it eventually turned out that the agent had booked TWO HH's on the same flights, both in business, all with the same details (passport etc etc)which played holy hob with the checkin process

the very helpful Delta Senior Supervisor at ATL said he'd never seen it nor should it be possible (at least I wasn't charged twice!!) but as he observed "fools can be so damn clever"

[tdracer]

KLOS, was it perchance a code share flight? Sometimes the different operators computers don't play very nice with each other...


I had something like that happen a while back on a code share flight - I'd booked through the website of another operator and selected seats for my wife and I. When we arrived at the airport, not only did we not get the seats I'd selected, the flight was full and we didn't even sit together.

[PAXboy]

Ah yes, like the one time I got to fly on Concorde (a single sector) and my 'reserved window seat' did not exist at check in ...

This thread has caused me to go back online for my next long haul booking and print off the seat reservations. Then it's more than just my word!

Incidentally, whilst on the VS website, I noticed this statement, pertinent to the observation by tdracer above:

Information for passengers who are booked to travel on a Delta Air Lines flight

Please check your ticket to see which airline your flight is operated by.

For Virgin Atlantic flights, please proceed to My Booking to retrieve your flight. For Delta Air Lines, please proceed to My trips on Delta.com, to manage your flight.

They also hot linked the pages.

[KLOS]

Thanks to all for your responses

TD
G'day.

Yes Code share BA./AA/IB/USAIR

Can anyone tell me whether AA/IB/USAIR non Silver and above have to pay the advance seat reservation on BA Flights or do they get free seat selection when booking?

Hotel T

Yes, there is no need for them to lie -they could just say there is a couple who would like to sit together.I would consider it.

[Ancient Mariner]

Colleague and I received boarding passes on a CAAC domestic at Beijing. This the days when boarding passes where drawn sequentially from a cardboard box. Pax one in line got 1A, number two 1B and so on.
Entering the aircraft it turned out that our seats did not exist, in their place were lavatories. Problem solved during take off run, with the two of us standing in the aisle. Amusing, and kudos to the cabin crew for not panicking (caring).
This exact same thing happened twice, both times on B737 that had an unusual lavatory location. Two-thirds aft on the port side.
Happy days flying domestically China early nineties.

[easyflyer83]

Some how, some way double booking does occur. It occasionally used to happen when I operated BA flights and very occasionally these days too. Often it isn't discovered until once on board.

[Rush2112]

Happened to me once on an SQ flight back to SIN from (I think) BKK. I was sat in my economy class seat. 43C which is one of a pair and someone had said it was a good seat and worth trying.

It was because after I had been there about 10 mins, a couple came along and one of them was allocated 43C - called over the stewardess and after a bit of a conflab amongst the crew I was whisked off to Business Class. I was quite happy with the solution...

[flash8]

Business on a Kras Air TU-154, Russian internal flight.

Problem was on boarding there was no business section, the entire a/c was economy...

Explained this to the young lady who allocated me 'two' Economy seats, so my laptop had its own seat on a quite crowded flight. I even took a photo for posterity. Other Passengers look bemused.

If I'd asked for a refund later I might have got it but travailing the Kras Air refund process would have been more than it was worth.

[Heathrow Harry]

once got a refund IN FULL from Merpati Nusantara in less than 30 days........... never got over the shock TBH

[Ancient Mariner]

Had the business/economy confusion happen to me on a Lufthansa flight from Baku. Business ticket, but no business class.