Selecting seats on Star Alliance partners booked on United award miles

If you don't get an answer here, try posting your question on the United mileage program forum on Flyertalk. There are some very knowledgeable people who frequent that website.

Often there is a way to get the booking code for the airline you will be flying (such as Lufthansa) so that after completing your award booking you can go to the Lufthansa website and use Manage My Booking to choose a seat. I did that with awrdsb booked on Qantas and Cathay Pacific with Alaska Airlines miles. But I have never used United miles so don't know how it works with them.

Here is the information on reserving seats on Lufthansa.

https://www.lufthansa.com/us/en/seat-reservation-economy-class

You can do it on the website at a cost of $35 ( for Economy seats).

You need to have the appropriate number for your reservation.

When you book a ticket (award ticket or paid in $) through one airline to fly on that airline's partner, you need to get the confirmation number (usually referred to as the "PNR") that the partner airline uses - not the United confirmation number (actually, you should have both). In many cases, once you have the partner airline's PNR number, you can go to that airline's website and log in (typically using your airline-specific PNR plus your surname - some airlines, especially Asian airlines, sometimes conflate/munge your name, so you may have to try variations), then you can usually pick a seat.

Regardless, your United confirmation number is only useful when dealing with United (for things that United can access). United can't see anything about seat assignments on partners.

If you can't do seat assignment on the partner airline's website, then you can at least call them - but you will need the PNR for their airline, not United's confirmation number.

So where do you get this mysterious PNR for the partner airline? There are two ways:

1. Go to United.com and log into your MileagePlus account. Click on "My Trips". Find the flight you booked, then click the "Manage" link for that flight. Note where it says "United Confirmation Number XXXXXX". Jot down that number (use it when you deal with United). Below that, you should see a link that says "This reservation contains partner flights. View Additional confirmation numbers." Click that link - you will see the PNR for the partner flight, jot that down (use it when you deal with the airline you're flying).
2. Call United and ask them to look it up for you.

When you travel, be sure you have both the United confirmation number and the airline's PNR with you in case you need it.

Finally, every airline handles seat selection a little differently. While most will let you choose seats online, in some cases you need to call, and in a few cases they make you wait until very late. Good luck!

David and Lola, thank you SO much for these tips. It is so generous of you both to take the time to explain what I need to do in such detail, with links and everything. I am going to give it a go and will let you know how it goes. Happy New Year!

Yes, I booked Lufthansa seats (United award) using the procedure outlined above -- get the Lufthansa confirmation number from your reservation on the United website, go on Lufthansa and select your seat. Haven't been successful with Swiss yet. (Can't remember whether I used my Lufthansa account or not.)

Also Lori, some partner airlines will accept the other airlines' frequent flyer numbers. For example I can go to klm.com to book a ticket and use my Delta frequent flyer number then I would be able to get seats..depending on that airline's rules.

I booked and paid fir a United codeshare operated by Swiss Air in 2016 for a 2017 flight on the United website. After booking the flight I discovered that United would not allow for seat selections until 24 hours before flight time. I called Swiss Air and was advised that Swiss Air would not pre-assign seats for United codeshares.

I'm a multi mil plus united traveler... when using ua award miles on LH or SA you cannot pre-select the seats through the ua site. both airlines will honor your ua status and place you in reasonable seats. given the short flights once you are in Europe it shouldn't be too agonizing to travel on a short hop in a less than ideal seat (imho)...deal with getting the best possible seat from the US to Frankfurt, Munich or wherever your transfer is and go with the flow from there. make sure you pick up your cheese sandwich before you board...
as an aside, LH ain't no peach in baggage class seats...they are not the airline they were 20 years ago. they are really strict and do not cut customers much if any slack. if you can get an exit aisle EcoPlus from ua you'll far better off. Swiss may be a bit better although I haven't flown with them recently. their service leans towards the more humane side.

For United code share tickets, it doesn't matter if you pay for them with miles or money you cannot select seats on those airlines until you check in for your flights. Frustrating if you want to see what seats are available before booking the flight. Using the tips others posted here you can sometimes select seats early on the code shares.