janisj

&quot;<i>I think that if I can pay for a seat, then I should be allowed to select one from whatever is left in my class of seats, first come, first served</i>&quot; - While I tend to agree w/ you - that is not how things work. No airline guarantees a specific seat -- just to get you from point A to point B. Even IF you do get seat assignments - they can always change your seats at check in.

MrNuke

scdreamer,

That is exactly right. They are hoping that someone with a confirmed seat in economy buys the E+ and then they will give you that seat or they hope that you are worried that you don't have a seat and will pay for the E+ to get a guaranteed seat. It is a source of extra revenue for United. As you get to boarding time they will assign the leftover E+ seats to the passengers that don't have assigned seats.

Kristina

janisj-I agree and I know they can change the seat assignments at will. My issue is with the fact that they would not assign a seat at all until check-in for that flight. It was just a fluke that the TA was able to get us any assigned seats.
Why can't they assign regular economy seats on the international flight if they can on the US flight? I just think it does not instill the consumer with a lot of confidence. Even though it's true they can change your seats, people are much more comfortable knowing they have an assigned seat.

MrNuke

&quot;I think that if I can pay for a seat, then I should be allowed to select one from whatever is left in my class of seats, first come, first served&quot;

The other problem with this statements is fair buckets. If I pay for a full fair economy seat and you pay for a discounted economy seat, yes we are still in the same class, I would hope I am getting a reserved seat before you.

What very likely happened to you Kristina is your fare bucket was over sold. If you would've waited until the flight you would've been put into economy plus for free.

missmissy

From what I'm reading it sounds like when we're 24 hours before our flight and we do the online check-in if we DON'T agree to pay more for Premium Economy then we MIGHT get it for free. On the flip side, with an international flight I'm more inclined to do just what United's hoping I'll do.....bite and buy the PE seats. If we didn't have a prepaid hotel in Venice, I'd be more likely to gamble and even be bumped. Thanks for all the great info! Melissa

AAFrequentFlyer

There is a very good reason why every airline blocks rows of seats for airport assignment only.

Families with children, handicapped people, full fare passengers (you know the ones that pay $2000 for the same cabin that you paid $500 for).

If they allowed seat reservations for all the seats, the least expensive, least needy folks would get all the seats and all the passengers that have needs or are paying top dollar would end up in row 39 in the middle seat.

That said, if you get to the airport early enough, the blocked seats can and will be released and assigned by the airport ticket agents or as a last resort, the gate agents.

Kristina

AAFF-I understand your explanation, but why is it that we were able to book seats on the LAX-IAD portion and not on the IAD-FCO? Same fare ticket. In addition, we were able to book seats on the return (Munich-LAX) on the day we bought the tickets.
It just seems random to me. AND, it wasn't just a few rows of seats it was about 60% of the plane which was blocked out when we bought the tickets.

missmissy-yes, you might get it for free but you might not. you could just as easily be assigned a seat in the back of the plane. We &quot;bit&quot; on UA's offer. I'm not sure if we would have if we'd had seats together, but I think so. $85 for the upgrade per seat is worth it to me not to hear my husband complain.

AAFrequentFlyer

perhaps because the seats were already reserved for the IAD-FCO flight?

zooey91

United, as most if not all other airlines, offers several seats for prebooking to elite (25K or more miles per year) flyers. There are some seats (&quot;Economy Plus&quot that are only available to elites or to others for a fee (or to the rest if nothing else is available on flight day). But there are also blocks of non E+ seats that only elites can pre-book.

If you know someone who is Premier or above, he or she can check on availability to give you a better idea of how full the flight is.

There are also ways for you to check yourself, which require knowledge of the fare codes. FlyerTalk has various threads explaining how to check on flight loads, but I don't remember off hand (I think you do a dummy booking of a &quot;standard&quot; frequent flyer award, and all the fare codes show up with number of availability, but my memory could easily be wrong on this account).

All this is to say that you shouldn't assume you'll be bumped just because you're not able to pre-book seats.

ms_go

There are some other odd things about United's seating &quot;system&quot; that could contribute. Say, for example, that you have four people on one reservation (PNR), but there are not four available seats <b>together</b> in economy. The seat map will appear to be completely blocked, not allowing you (or the phone agents) to see or select any seats, even if there were two separate pairs or four individual scattered seats available. When I've had that situation, I've had to split the PNR into separate records in order to get seats assigned (or plead with a phone agent to contact the seat desk). To see if there are any seats available, try doing a dummy booking for one person.

suze

&lt;I was horrifed at the thought of spending 8 hours next to a stranger.&gt;

Had to laugh at this comment, because I often travel solo if I felt this way I'd never be able to go anywhere by plane -lol!

Kristina

suze-yeah, well <i>what I meant</i> was as opposed to sitting next to my husband who was also on the same plane.
If I fly solo, which I do, I prefer an aisle seat because I get up a lot on long flights. I didn't relish the thought of climbing over a stranger or waking them up as I was assigned a window seat.

Look, I know it's really no big deal to some people where they sit on a plane. To me it's important. I'm a nervous flyer and being stuck in a window seat next to a stranger is the last place I want to be if I can avoid it. It's a recipe for claustrophobia for me. That said, going on the trip is the most important thing and of course I would have done it if I'd had to. But fortunately, I didn't.