Tiny planning question

[Dawn]

If I'm planning on doing online check in do I need to request seats now or do I do it when I do the check in thing?

[Skywatcher]

Thing that really gets my goat about booking seats is we booked ours ages in advance - then confirmed a few weeks before and when we flew out and when we came back we couldn't even get on the floor we'd booked let alone the seats - the vacant desk clerk just said

'its all 1st come 1st served'

so whats the point - maybe I'm doing it wrong

[arkvilla]

We've chosen our seats online for our trip in July ( we did it the day we booked) but they do say they won't guarantee the seats...

We've only once not got the one's we booked online

Sandra

[Skywatcher]

Its happened to us every single time

[Keith]

'its all 1st come 1st served'

so whats the point - maybe I'm doing it wrong

sighs and nods

Dawn, best way to do it is to book what you can get now yep. Then when you do online checkin, if there are seats available, the seat map will pop up and you'll get a chance to change them to any that are then available. (that's in theory, I've never once seen the seat map at online checkin time, but I'm assured that's because all the seats would have gone... despite them always saying they hold back a large percentage to allocate at checkin!).

So all you can do is try to book seats you can live with as soon as you can then keep checking to make sure you have them.

End of the day as Skywatcher says, you can still get bumped right up to you get on the plane with the most likely "bumping" taking place on the day of the flight.

My experience trying to fix things always matches Skywatchers. The attitude of the checkin folks seems to be "hey you're on the plane so what's your problem"?

We turned up at Manchester once, 3 hours early, to be told that the plane had been changed and there were less seats and as couple without kids we hadnt yet been allocated a seat. There was this strange silence as the checkin agent looked at me, I looked back wondering if that was it and we were supposed to smile say thanks and go home? In the end, not very happily, she phoned the behind the scenes people and got us some seats but what the heck?

Honestly airflight must be the only thing where they're allowed to sell more than they have and then utterly fail to deliver and you can't do a thing!

[Slowhand]

I reckon that we must be among the lucky ones as we have always been given the seats we booked....touch wood!

[Keith]

I reckon that we must be among the lucky ones as we have always been given the seats we booked....touch wood!

You two are just too nice to get bumped

[MystikPiglit]

I book them online as soon as I'm able, then I check back regularly and when we do online check-in.
Then we do twilight check-in and ask for the exit row seats instead, if they're available.
We have also been lucky with being given our booked seat numbers.

[Slowhand]

You two are just too nice to get bumped

Now you are making me blush Keith. [Flattery will get you everywhere! ]

[Keith]

Now you are making me blush Keith. [Flattery will get you everywhere! ]