Lufthansa Seat Assignments

I called CO/UA directly, and they assigned seats over the phone, however, I wasn't that far out-maybe 90 days or so. Reservations can access LUF, however, I guess a consumer can't through the website. After I was done with reservations, the seat assignments popped-up on my itinerary.

If you go to Lufthansa's website and type in your PNR number (Lufhansa Airline Locator), you should be able to pick seats (and special meals) in most cases.

Karen, I recently did a similar flight (using United miles, booked on Lufthansa). Call United. They won't be able to help you with seat assignment, but they can give you the PNR number that Lufthansa will be using (it's different from the confirmation code that United uses). Armed with the Lufthansa number, you can then go to Lufthansa's web site, enter that number in, and access your flight info, including doing online seat assignments. Once you have the Lufthansa PNR, keep it handy, it's what Lufthansa will use (but keep the United number, too).

Karen, we have had the same difficulty. To solve the problem, I drove to S.F. International and went to the Lufthansa window and they took care of everything. They were most kind. Further, it was a great flight from LAX to Frankfurt and then onto Florence, Italy. Please note that love going the S.F. airport (kinda wierd isn't it) A cup of coffee at Rulli and I'm fine. I guess that you could call Lufthansa and solve the problem there. United was not able to solve the issue over the phone for this issue. We had the same difficulty with Air Canada going to Spain last year but we were able to get our seat assignments over the phone.

Thanks everyone. I'll first call United for the Lufthansa record locator # and see if I can access seat assignments via their web site. If that fails, I fly in/out of SFO every couple of months so I can just stop by Lufthansa there.
Larry, we also are flying LAX-Frankfurt-Florence (business), but need to book and pay for our SFO-LAX flight. United says they can't "connect" a paid reservation with a miles reservation. I'm thinking if we schedule an afternoon flight to LAX to arrive three hours before our flight to Europe, that should be more than enough time to allow for a delayed flight out of SFO. Any thoughts based on your experience with same connection?

Karen, we were able to do this when we booked the original tickets. Our flight included our flight down to LAX. For you now, you probably have to book a separate flight. Bummer as it's not worth using a lot of points for the short flight. On our flight down to LAX, we arranged to pick up our luggage and walk over to the Tom Bradley International and checked in there. We wanted to eliminate one of the luggage transfer worries. We departed on the 6:40pm flight to Frankfurt which arrived at 2:15pm Frankfurt time the next day. No difficulty with immigration. None at Florence.

Karen, First of all, trust me - United will have the Lufthansa PNR number. They can give that to you over the phone, then you can use that on Lufthansa's web site to pick seats. Worked just fine for me. Second, you're correct that they can't connect a paid ticket plus an award ticket. But you may still have an option... Check to see if they have award seats still available for the SFO-LAX leg of your flight. If they do, you could cancel your award ticket, and then immediately re-book it, but originating in SFO (or any of the Bay Area airports). You might also check other routings that might be available, ie SFO-SEA-FRA. There are many routings that would work, you just need to find out if there are seats available when you want to travel (if this is far in advance, you'll probably have better luck than if it's coming up soon - you never know but its worth a shot, since the cost in miles is the same, regardless of whether your award ticket begins in SFO or anywhere else in the US). You will get hit with a small fee (IIRC, $75 per person) to cancel your award ticket and redeposit the miles - but that's probably(?) cheaper than paying for the connecting flight out of pocket. Of course there's a small risk that between the time when you cancel your existing award ticket and when you make the replacement reservation, the seats could disappear. But if you're quick about it, that risk is small. Of course all of this presupposes seats are available. Hope that helps. Good luck.

Thanks for the advice. Called United, they gave me Lufthansa's booking code and 800# (United can't access Lufthansa's system). Called lufthansa and reserved seats, but could have logged on to Lufthansa's site using the booking code and last name and done the same. The reserved seats now show on both United's and Lufthansa's reservations when logged in. Sadly, United Business saver fares dried up from SFO mid April. I keep checking in case something appears, but no luck thus far. So unless we wanted to fly mid week (we didn't), have some crazy connections, or or REALLY long layovers, flying to LAX to get a direct flight to Frankfurt was the best option. We'll make sure we plan for enough time to allow for something to go wrong so we still make our flight to Frankfurt.
I have a $150 voucher from United, so our flights to LAX will only cost us $50.