Airline Seat Reservations -- do they stick?
 

I just reserved our flight to London on American, and made seat reservations via Travelocity. How likely is it that these seat preferences will be honored? On our previous international flights, we were moved around at check-in.

Hi enewell,

I suggest that you call the airline directly and make sure that they have your reservations in their system.

If the flight is significantly over- or under-booked, they will often change the aircraft type. When that happens, seat reservations are no longer valid. Confirm your seats with the airline several times before you leave.

I agree with checking with the airline directly now and perhaps again later. Unfortunately, I have had the experience of seat assignment changes when the aircraft equipment type did NOT change and, of course, when you ask "How did this happen?" nobody can or will supply any sort of reasonable answer (probably because there wasn't one). In general, I have had little difficulty with this and hopefully you won't either.

If you stick to the seat, just use those extra handiwipes you carry for emergencies.

Nikki!
#-o

No matter how you purchased your tickets, you should always reconfirm the reservation (and your seat assignment) at least once beforehand.

Check your seating arrangement through your pc.When I bought my tickets this past july, AA gave me the options to go through my advantage acct and change my seat number and location.

At checkin you can sometimes change your seats too, just ask, sometimes your seats get switched just before a flight and you may even get better ones. At the gate you can change to an upgrade or a better seat if you get lucky.

kismetchimara, that only works if you booked your tickets on line with AA. Although you can go to aa.com and check out your flight number and date and see if those seats are marked as reserved or not -- that's a start. But you will need to register on AA.com to do that.

Nikki! LOL. Although I have enjoyed my experience with NWA/KLM, sticking to seat assignments are not their stronger points. On a couple trips, I was careful which seats I chose, trying to use our extended family to create a buffer zone b/t our kid and other passengers. Despite our efforts, we were scattered around the plane and had to barter seats just so mom and dad could both be with the kid.

Trust me, you have to get your seat assignments from AA. You can call or do this over their web site not Travelocity.