Booking seats on Delta with an Air France reservation

Depends on the type/fare of ticket. I purchased tickets - Premium Economy - on the Delta web site but am flying on Air France metal. Able to select seats on both Delta & Air France web sites.

We just did this and we were able to do it on the delta website

It lets us select the seats and then we hit save, but they don't show up on the reservation after refreshing. Guess we will have to call Air France or Delta.

I’ve had this problem - but the reverse, I guess. We booked on Delta to fly Air France. We were able to book seats on the Seattle to Paris. But we were never able to get the seats to save on the Paris to Venice flight. I would choose seats and then when I refreshed my screen I would be right back at the Unassigned Seats.

A little research showed that I did actually have those seats, I think, because when I would go back and look at the seat map for the flight, my two seats that I had just tried to book were blocked off (for me, I think).

But since I couldn’t fix it in a way that provided actual written proof that we had those seats, I called Delta and they were able to make the seat choice hold. It took awhile on the phone until the Delta agent saw the issue but she did fix it and our seat assignments have “held” now for many months.

We had the exact same experience as Valerie. I keep checking as our flights are for early December and I don't want any surprises;) Make sure you get the confirmation code for Delta as well as the AF one. That way if you have to call for any reason, you have your booking code.

I have a similar situation. I guess I'd call it more of a beef. I purchased tickets sold as "main cabin/economy plus" tickets from Delta with miles round trip to Bordeaux. Because I was using miles, I had only the choice of one itinerary and that particular ticket type. The itinerary is a code share with AirFrance. Because AirFrance doesn't have that ticket type, if I want to select a seat, I have to pay extra. My trip has 5 legs. I understand each airline operates differently, but if I purchase a main cabin ticket from Delta, I'm supposed to get seat selection. Right now, the plane has about 1/2 to 2/3 of the seats open for seat selection for my upcoming trip. I wouldn't mind quite as much if I could actually purchase better seats, like a comfort plus or similar. But, I'm only allowed to purchase a seat in main cabin. So basically, Delta sold me a basic economy ticket but called it main cabin and AirFrance is making me pay to select the seat. Soon after I purchased, the ticket type on my trip was changed to basic economy.

I'd be interested to know when AirFrance assigns seats and if the passenger is allowed to change at that point, or if I would just need to take my chances on my preferred seat day of travel.

I have a message into to Delta Customer Care. I've been waiting now for 2 months for an answer. When I call Delta they said there is nothing they can do, I need to pay to select seats.

jules--We had that exact same situation and I was fit to be tied. Even Delta said we should not have had to pay, but of course didn't really have a choice.

We ended up having to call Delta to get the seats booked. Hopefully it took!

@Jules, MikeLiz,

This is our experience with the economy budget tickets: my kids buy the budget ticket on Air France when they come over and are allowed to purchase seats at any time. With Delta's budget economy tickets, you can't choose a seat before check-in. You get what you are assigned or can choose only at check-in, is what I understand.
So, if you have the least expensive Delta ticket available, but are flying on Air France, at least you are allowed to choose and pay for a seat ahead of time rather than getting what's left at check-in.

Bets--We did not buy the least expensive Delta ticket though. It is that Delta and AF have different views of the level of ticket.

Bets, as you and I discussed previously, I do NOT have the cheapest Delta economy (budget economy) ticket.. When I purchased my ticket, the option was main cabin/economy plus, as I described in my comment above. I confirmed again with Delta, yesterday, my ticket is an economy plus ticket. My ticket is changeable, and I am supposed to be able to select a seat at no charge. At issue is that Delta sells a ticket type that AirFrance does not have. I would have had more options and then not selected an AirFrance codeshare, but silly me, I wanted to use some of my many earned miles. I didn't and wouldn't purchase a ticket directly from AirFrance

Delta said there is no way to get us a seat without paying. Hmm, it doesn't really take a mental giant to figure out the appropriate credit or miles and provide it to our accounts. Or, they could just not sell a ticket they can't provide.

jules---You explained it much better than I did. We are in that boat together.

I thought Delta had re-calibrated the cost and class of your ticket into a less expensive class, refunded miles or money when I read

"basically, Delta sold me a basic economy ticket."

That would have been a good solution, free up some of your miles, pay for seats. Indeed, this is a very unfair situation.