EL AL Matmid - LY-coded AA-operated flight: seat reservations

I've had a very frustrating time dealing with AA, LY and Orbitz regarding changing the seat reservations on my AA transatlantic flight. For full details see here:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/american-aadvantage/1314882-assign-exit-row-ly-codeshare-aa-flight.html

I'm posting a further question in the LY forum here since you guys might know the answer.

1) Is there any way that someone at LY who knows the exact details of this problem might be able to help me?

To recap the thread details from the AA forum:
-- Orbitz says: computer won't do it, so you must call LY.
-- AA says: not our ticket, so we can't do anything until 24hrs before flight time.
-- LY says: our seat map shows that AA won't allow us to place passengers in the exit rows. When I asked the LY call center representative to contact AA she said they have no way of doing so other than by calling the standard AA phone line.

I can't believe that airlines don't have more direct ways than ordinary passengers of contacting the operating airline for a flight ticketed as their own codeshare.

2) For future reference, would it have been possible to buy this ticket (AA104 sold as LY8053, LY316, LY1) at the O/G-class LY NYC<>TLV fare on AA 001 stock rather than LY 114 stock? The AA agent on the phone suggested that if I had called AA and purchased it though them, they would have had control of seating etc and could have sorted this out for me. Would it even have helped here if the ticket stock were 001 anyway?

3) What are the technical reasons that dealing with this sort of seat assignment problem is so hard? Is there some flag on the record that could be removed? Is this a problem of computer systems not talking to each other and Sabre vs. Globespan or Amadeus or who knows what?

Any comments and thoughts would be most helpful.

Perhaps I really should have booked with an experienced travel agent who knows what's important to a seasoned flyertalker. Although maybe it wouldn't have made a difference and LY is never able to assign exits on AA for AA elites, even if the travel agent knows the right contact or how to ask in the correct way. Can anyone enlighten me here?

Did you have LY give you the AA PNR and use that when directly calling AA?

Did you have LY give you the AA PNR and use that when directly calling AA?

Yes, I did (or rather, I found it myself by typing my name, AA flight number and date into the AA Reservations search page: LY couldn't give it to me, and nor could Orbitz).

On the day that I booked the ticket (or shortly afterwards) I was in fact able to change seats to a block of two in the first section of the Y cabin (which are usually reserved for AA elites as "Preferred Plus seats"). So that proves that those seats are not blocked entirely. I just haven't had success changing my seats any more since that time.

Looking again at the fare rules on ExpertFlyer for LY's O/G class NYC<(LHR)>TLV fare, I see that perhaps I would have been able to book the AA flight numbers by having an agent price the trip manually rather than using Orbitz's autopricing. That'll teach me to use a travel agent (yes, agold18, you can say "I told you so!" ;))

I just naïvely assumed that the LY flight number on the AA flight would still give me access to seat changes and elite AA seating if I signed into the AA PNR with my AA FF number in the record, as I have done with IB codeshares on AA-metal flights in the past.

I guess the problem here is really one of incomplete information: I wish there was a comprehensive online resource about exactly what works and does not work in the interaction between multiple airlines' computer systems, booking engines, codeshares and fare rules.