Reserving Seats with Partner Flights

Yes, it is common when the flight is operated by a partner that the seating chart or choice will not be available through the US airline. You found what is the most common work around. I will go to the effort for a long haul flight, but a short intra-Europe flight, I rarely worry about it.

You found what is the most common work around.

Paul, I'm glad I figured that out. I wouldn't want to be in a middle seat on an 8-hour flight. :)

BA, even when you buy biz class with FF miles, makes you pay to choose seats,prior to the 24 hour before flight check in

We used Alaska miles for AA flights and could choose seats during the booking on the Alaska site.

There is a lot of different ways this works., so stay alert and flexible when working the FF miles puzzle

Luckily Lufthansa had free seat selections. We did pay to upgrade our seats for additional leg room on the 8-hour flights. It's worth the extra $100 - especially since our flights only cost $100 each LOL So we basically paid the same price to upgrade our seats as we did for our tickets ha ha.

Our experience has been that this is a common problem among codes shares with Star Alliance partners. We've had the same problem with Lufthansa, Air Canada, Air New Zealand, and United. And the same work around. But some short-haul flights with Lufthansa, you simply can't get a seat selection until the 24 hr online check in. After the headaches we had with Lufthansa on our last trip, I'm going to try to avoid future code share flights as much as possible.

CJean, your bad report on Lufthansa was surprising to me. I've found that it is a way to make United miles go farther (if you are willing to take a two segment flight from the US), and their transatlantic services (and Business Class lounges ... ) are superior to United. When there was a cancellation (out of Paris, I think .. ), Lufthansa jumped on the problem and got me back to Newark/NYC only a few hours late, through a different German hub city. Lufthansa Business Class (... on United miles) is superior to United "Polaris" Business Class, too.

I did something similar when booking flights on Copa (to Panama) using United frequent flyer miles from United's website. Once I had the Copa booking number it was no problem getting seat assignments at their website.

Similarly, when purchasing tickets from KLM where the first leg was a codeshare operated by Delta, we were able to get our TSA pre-check info and seat assignments added to the Delta res quite easily. However, it turned out to be impossible to get seat assignments on the KLM flights on that trip. Every place on their website said that if we didn't pay for seats in advance, we'd be able to choose them when checking in 24 hours before the flight. That was just a flat-out lie. When the time came, online check-in was limited to the Delta leg and there was no possible way to access the seat map or print boarding passes for the trans-Atlantic KLM flight we were connecting to from either airline's website. When we got to the airport, the Delta agent was able to print our KLM boarding passes with random seat assignments on them, but he didn't have any access to make any changes.

I found out that I needed to get the Lufthansa Booking Number (United was able to give me that number). I then proceeded to Lufthansa's website and I was able to reserve the seats in advance.

I had no such luck booking with Cathay Pacific for BOS > HKG > AKL > CQN, and CHC > AKL > HKG > BOS.

Cathay Pacific provided booking reference numbers for their BOS HKG flights, but none for the other flights serviced by Air New Zealand. I called Cathay Pacific, but they were unable to give me the booking reference numbers for Air New Zealand. Even dropping by Cathay Pacific's Hong Kong office got me nowhere. I ended up unable to check in online for the NZ flights.

I think one problem could be that the airlines do not use the same programs.