ccolor

We purchased tickets and picked our assigned seats a couple months ago for a trip in May. I check our itinerary regularly and found that even though the equipment didn't change, our seats went from the front of the section to the very last row. Now - how come? I was really pleased with the original selections and will keep looking in case I can change back, but am curious.

AAFrequentFlyer

what airline?

RoamsAround

Truth is seat assignments are never guaranteed.

Have you tried changing your seat assigment on the airlines website?

diann24

This has happened to me more than once. I was told that this airlines has there "preferred customers" and if they are booked with more preferred customers, they give them the better seats and move others to the back. I am not sure if this is true but it is what someone told me. It was usairways. Other seated around us were also moved to the back after there intital on line selection.

ccolor

It's Delta - ok, you folks - quit laughing!! I guess they're going through "issues" right now and I'd just better be glad I still have the flights. And yes, after their latest round of news I'll be VERY diligent in checking that aspect of the vacation!

roamsaround: I did use the website to move our seats back up some, but the good spots were taken.....for now....

Thanks, all.

ccolor

Update:

HAH!! Our original seats were open today and I re-snagged them. I'd feel pretty smart about this if I didn't think in the back of my head that Delta will go in and change them again should they think the need is there.

otto

this has happened to me, and it was explained to me at the time (virgin atlantic) that it was because the flight was at low capacity and they needed the weight in the back for take off, and after we were up in the air, we can switch around to whereever we choose in the cabin.

clevelandbrown

I think this often happens when another flight is canceled, and they are fitting two loads of passengers into one plane. If you and someone from the other flight have the same seat, someone has to be moved. I think also if they sell tickets to a group, such as a sports team, they may move people around so the team can sit together. I remember once seeing about 10 freakishly tall young men all crammed into tourist seating; I figured it was a basketball team. We noticed that, since they weren't slouching, they didn't have trouble with the pitch of the seats (a common complaint from some people), but they all had very large feet that barely fit into the footwells.

I keep a list of good and bad seats for the planes we fly, and just go in every few days and see if I can improve out situation. Even when checking in (on line or at the airport), I check and see if any better seats have come open, and we've had pretty good results.

Patty

Could the equipment be changing between different versions of the same type of aircraft? For example, Delta has several different 757 configurations and at first glance it may seem like there was no aircraft change.

clarasong

This happened to us when we were returning from Europe on BA. We were travelling with friends and all 4 of us had the seats assigned by window and isle. When they tried to seat us elsewhere, to accomodate some stafff, I just said "no, we'd like the seats that we had assigned, and I stood in the isle until the steward moved them and gave us our proper seats"...I could hear him saying to them "this lady is very unhappy, so if you don't mind changing with her"....as if it was my fault.

ccolor

Patty: Nope, it's an Embraer 145. The segment is pretty short so it wasn't a big issue, more like hard to understand.

Patty

Oh you're on an ExpressJet operated flight. You can try to move to a bulkhead or exit row at check-in. I think these are still blocked in advance even to Delta elites.

Patty

Nevermind, I just checked the seat map of a random ExpressJet operated flight and it looks like row 12 (exit) is now pre-reservable so they must have fixed that issue. Although it now looks like it's pre-reservable by anyone as I wasn't logged in when I checked.