100,000miler

Years ago Canadian was able to block seats for its top tier members. AC is not able to do this today.

This is a shame and frankly an insult to top tier members who deserve something better. I am not talking about u/g to J, only to have more room and comfort in Y.

If Canadian could do it some 20 yrs ago, it is about time AC could do it today. I cannot tell you the number of times I have been on flights to be stuck with someone next to me when there are empty seats in other rows. It really pisses me off and makes me feel like a lesser customer despite my status of a long time SE and almost 2MM.

AC the time has come for this enhancement for your FF members!

YUL_Around_The_World

If they do it, it would be less likely that people would :

- Pay for a LMU (less revenue for AC)
- Pay for Business class from the beginning knowing that an empty neighbour seat is acceptable and "enough" for good enough comfort

YEG-Bound

Great suggestion! SEs and other elites are permitted "preferred" seating but my understanding is that for those that have not chosen seat assignment due to Tango or other reasons, the usual middle "last choice" seats are assigned from front to back. A prior thread discussed this as my information. If AC assigned these seats from back to front, this would allow a passive "blocked" seat. This would allow true "preferential" seating and a preferred seat would only be filled if all the rear seats were filled first.

I did ask AC to block the middle seat on a previous flight when I was booked into J and the equipment was changed to non-J. I was not happy at the gate with the change but somehow my request was granted since the flight was not full (but pretty close).

drvannostren

I don't DISAGREE, when there's open seats this would be a great idea.

But let me pose this question to you. Let's say you've chosen 12C for free as an SE.

A couple is willing to PAY for 12B and 12A...you're not suggesting that AC deny this are you? That's literally throwing money away for them.

If there was no such thing as preferred seats this would be easier. Because as an SE you could just pick 12C they'd automatically block 12B (Assuming you got there first, they can't be kicking people out of seats they'd selected, free or not) and we'd move on. But with the pay-for program I don't know that this really works.

Maybe they could do this only for non-preferred seats, but how often would you really take a non-preferred seat?

margarita girl

As discussed in another thread, AC's IT is incapable of assigning your preferred seat selection (aisle vs window).

This has been discussed ad nauseum even in the current Bens thread. Blocking the middle seat would require some financial investment, money that could be better spent on executive bonuses. So, not going to happen.

BTW, LH does this for all Star Gold passengers.

flyquiet

I have not been on a flight in a long time that isn't full to the gills. It seems even less worth the IT investment to enable this when it's going to end up as only a theoretical block. Maybe I am flying all the wrong places...

SYD/YYZ

This would be a great perk. I remember when flying bmi a few years back I always had the seat next to me blocked as a AC*G-this was a great perk I don't think I have seen anyone else in * adopt.

SYD/YYZ

CanTraveller

Lufthansa is doing that for Senators and Hon Circle members. It usually works well. Of course since preferred seats are for sale this option is a bit trickier to implement.
I like the idea of assigning the empty seats from the back. A good compromise.

jbb

While I agree its a shame, I don't know if I would characterise it as an 'insult'. It's not like AC is doing this maliciously, to deliberately pi** off its SEs.

margarita girl

LH is doing this for ALL Star Gold members. I remember booking my seat and giving the seat number to my GF so she could sit beside me, and it didn't matter how many times I changed seats, the seat beside me was never available! That's when I realized that LH offers seat blocking. It's only on very full flights that I don't have an empty seat beside me. Kudos to LH. ^^^

blue2002

If this board had a "top 10 oldest and most frequently reoccuring discussions" thread, this would would probably make top 3, right after "Why so many crew in J".

lcohen999

Ben Lipsey

As some have alluded to, this is an IT issue. Seat assignments at check in are handled by DCS, which is a legacy system. We have looked into implementing this in the past, but it would actually be a major investment believe it or not (anything touching legacy IT systems always seems to be). It's not that we don't hear you guys, but rather that it's hard to make a solid business case to justify this kind of expense - i.e. sure, our Elite members would appreciate the change, but would it lead to incremental flying? Would revenues increase? I imagine many of you might deal with finance committees in your jobs, and ours is no different: they keep us honest.

superangrypenguin

Totally understood. I think financial committees in our jobs also not only keep us honest, but ANNOYED

Sean Peever

As a one off the business case is no doubt harder! And unfortunately I do not know enough about AC's internal workings and contracts to know what is or is not possible (nor do I expect this info to be shared here).

But, if I make some presumptions, based on an average IT contract with IBM. It may be possible to bring back some of the IT changes in-house. Hiring a small IT team internally, tasked and focused to work only on minor improvements. Like this, ability to change all seats online, etc etc.

The salary cost of the team yearly may only be the cost of a couple IBM changes, so if you bundled them together as such there might be a business case for a much bigger improvement, and with Vancouver becoming a majour IT city there is the talent in Canada to do so.

But I'm really going out on a limb here and guessing because I just don't have enough info to make a post I am confident to stand behind here.