We booked our flights on American Airlines a couple months ago for our honeymoon to Europe. I called a few days ago to add my husband's frequent flyer number to the reservation (because the online site wouldn't let me add it). Today, I checked my reservation, just on a whim, and found that the window + aisle seats that we had for our outbound flight were CANCELLED! There was NO mention of anything related to cancelling seats when I called, and why in the world would I cancel my seats a few days before the flight?? I called customer service and they said, sorry, we don't know how this happened. Yeah, I don't know either. And of course there are no other aisle/window seats available. I've flown AA before without issues. The moral of the story is: even if you make a change as innocuous as adding a frequent flyer number, check your reservation immediately thereafter, because who knows what idiot changes were accidentally made on it. Sorry, just need to rant.
Posted by
Coppell, TX USA
284 posts
Sorry to hear that. A few years ago I already had my boarding pass and was making a connecting flight on AA. When I tried to board, the seat I had was already accounted for. This was strange since I checked in and received my boarding pass at an airport 6+ hours earlier. Come to find out that at the connecting airport they gave my seat away to someone else within 1 hour of the flight. You always need to keep in mind that the AA work can yank your seats and give them to someone subjectively and leave you hanging out to dry. Edwin
Posted by
Denver, CO, USA
1556 posts
My advice is to go online and continue checking for seats and keep moving as different seats open up to get better seats. I would not do online checkin till almost the last possible moment since people get upgraded and seats open up which you can switch to. In general, most airlines will close out the seat map approx. 6 hrs before flight departure and control switches to airport personnel. At this point you can print out your boarding passes and if the seats are still not great you can try again at the gate since here too people will be upgrading and other seats will open up. Good luck.
Posted by
Grapevine, TX, USA
875 posts
Even tho we typically use FF miles and make resers about 9-10 mos in advance, I usually check a couple of times/week to make sure our plane/seats haven't changed. Once they changed planes from a 777 to a 763 which definitely altered our seat assignments.