No advance seats on Iberia
 

Iberia has apparently adopted a new policy, and in keeping with the general trend of airline service, it's a bad one for many of us.

I'm flying on Iberia to Madrid early in 2012, and my ticket was booked for me. It was booked through American, though, since my first flight is American Eagle to Chicago. I was surprised to find that Iberia's new policy seems to be that if you book a seat on an Iberia flight through a code share, you cannot choose your seat until the day before the flight.

I guess there is nothing anyone can do about this, but it is a real annoyance. Does anyone know anything about this? What could Iberia's incentive possibly be?

Well, they are in partnership with BA, and BA's policy for years has been that in economy, you can only select seats when you check in online from 24 hours in advance (and this is booking direct with BA). At least they let you do the return leg at the same time, unlike bmi who make you wait until 24 hours before your return flight.

It's nothing new-whether you book directly w/them or not!
Good luck w/Iberia-let's hope the crew remembers to take their happy pills.............!

Just remember that not everyone will check in online 24 hrs in advance, and make sure you do. I never had any trouble on Iberia.

I don´t know about intercontinental flights, but in domestic and european flights they are pushing hard to pay for your reserved seats in advance (4 euros normal seats, 10 euros emergency aisle).

I have booked early this morning for my flight tomorrow to Bilbao (it is not 24 euros in advance, it begins at 1:00 am the previous day) and the seats being offered on sale during the last month were open to everybody.

So ... probably you should be able to choose your seat, as long as you pay for it. Ask them, just in case. And remember what yorkshire said, not everybody books the previous day.

Bye, Cova

Thanks so much for this information. Cova's comments show that this is all probably about more revenues. Well, the situation gets more annoying.

Because the ticket booked the flights with AA numbers, Iberia can't open up my reservation so that I can purchase a seat (now, apparently, anyone who buys a ticket on Iberia has to purchase an advanced seating assignment, and the charge is $35). Though I think this is a new service low for a purportedly full service airline, I was willing to pay the $35 to make sure I could avoid spending the night in a middle seat.

To make matters worse, I had hoped that since I booked the flight as an American ticket, I would be able to use my gold status "perks" to bring home a second suitcase full of olive oil as a free checked bag. But no, I can't do that because it's an Iberia flight.

So the bottom line is that I'm treated like an American passenger when it works to my disadvantage (preventing me from buying a seat), and I'm treated like an Iberia passenger when it works to my disadvantage (preventing me from getting a free second checked bag with my gold status).

And no one at either American or Iberia can tell me with certainty how I do the advance seat assignment since I have an American ticket and want to reserve a seat on an Iberia flight. The only glimmer of hope I got was from a customer service rep at AA who said that I should check back because this policy has changed several times in the last few weeks because Iberia keeps changing its mind.

I think it is getting worse.

It started as holding last remaining seats as not reservable. Now, hardly any seats can be reserved before checking-in in economy.

The reason is simple: monetize everything passengers would pay. As long as all the competitors go along this line, why change?

And unless you live in cities with direct connection to destinations, you have to deal with code shares where you cannot even choose seats. On my last trip, I was just given a seat assignment from the sky like non-reclining last row seat in-front of a lavatory and all I got from the US carrier was, "sorry, we cannot change code share seat assignments."

lreynold1-

My husband encountered the same issue recently - he flew r/t on iberia from Boston to Madrid (then connect to Barcelona). This was booked on AA.com so he could get miles.

We called AA and asked for the PNR code for his Iberia itinerary (different from the PNR code he receives from AA booking). However, despite getting the Iberia PNR code, we still couldn't use it to log in onto Iberia's website to change his seat. We tried all this before and within the 24 hr period prior to his flight.

Anyway the good news is, the flights he was on were not that full at all. When he checked in in Boston, not long he got his window seat request, the check-in agent offered to block the seat next to him so he had 2 seats all to himself.

He had nobody sitting next to him on his return flight. I guess my advice is: don't sweat it too much. Enjoy your trip!

Hi Laurie. This will not help you book your seat but maybe you can pull up the flight on the Iberia website to at least see how booked the flight is and what your good/bad chances are.
It might also give you a chance to note where you might want to seat so that you can check the seats out ahead of time on seat guru.
At least you might feel that you are doing something proactive. And I am surprised that Iberia says it cannot open up your reservation as they have to have a record locator with your name.
Enjoy Madrid. I know you will.

Laurie,

As far as I know this is not a new policy for transatlantic flights with Iberia, has been in place as far as I know. Its one of the reasons I havent used them. In my experience, only first class/business class seats can be booked in advance.

We flew from Austin to Moscow and SPB to Austin and both coming and going internationally within Europe could not book those seats until 23 hours before. We flew various carriers and it was the same on all of them. it appeared though when I went to select seats that since they were share partners of both Delta and Continental, they used my seat preferences to preselect my seats and I was happy with them.

Thanks to everyone. I guess the best thing for me to do is to take a deep breath and just deal with it. I'm not a fussy traveler, but I think seat selection is kind of a basic part of air travel. Oh well.

I was surprised to read that several of you say this is a longstanding Iberia practice. I've flown in and out of Madrid at least once or twice a year for years now, frequently on the Iberia flight between Chicago and Madrid, and I've always been able to pre-book my seat when booking through American. The AA people tell me it's a new policy for Iberia, but they have told me many other things that are clearly wrong, so I put no stock in any of it now.

If I didn't have that American Eagle leg to Chicago, it'd be easier -- I envy you guys in big cities who have lots of choices that those of us in the boonies can only dream of.

Thanks all, and happy Thanksgiving, Laurie