Korean Air Skypass - Korean Air to China via ICN, using Northwest Airlines Miles-advanced seat assignment?

I used my Northwest/Delta miles for a trip to China and there was availability (Perk Saver only 60,000 miles) using Korean Airlines one of their partners. The flight is non stop from Washington Dulles to Seoul (14 1/2 hours) in a Boeing 777-200 in economy class. Then a short layover, finally arriving in Beijing after a short 2 hour flight. Seems like an easier trip than Northwest or Delta, that has two stops in Detroit and Tokyo with longer layovers.

Here is my concern with Korean Airlines: I have no status on either Korean, Northwest or Delta Airlines and will be flying coach. I can survive in coach going to Asia but not in a middle seat. I had a hellish experience on another wide body plane on a 14 hour flight to Asia, where they would not assign me a seat until Airport Check in and was forced to sit in the middle seat for 14 hours with two large passengers on either side of me in the middle section of five seats. I thought I was going to die.

I am reading that if you are using Northwest or Delta frequent flyer miles Korean Air will not assign seats until Airport Check in and the horrors of the middle seat will likely happen again.

I have no status miles or extra cash to upgrade to business class or ability to buy a ticket for cash.

Is this true, and would I be able to get advanced seat assignments using my Northwest/Delta miles on Delta Airlines to Asia using 60,000 frequent flyer miles?

(If I can not get an aisle seat, I may have to bail out of the trip)

I want to use my Northwest/Delta miles for a trip to China and see that there is availability (Perk Saver only 60,000 miles) using Korean Airlines one of their partners. The flight would be non stop from Washington Dulles to Seoul (14 1/2 hours) in a Boeing 777-200 in economy class. Then a short layover, finally arriving in Beijing after a short 2 hour flight. Seems like an easier trip than Northwest or Delta, that has two stops in Detroit and Tokyo with longer layovers.

Here is my concern with Korean Airlines: I have no status on either Korean, Northwest or Delta Airlines and will be flying coach. I can survive in coach going to Asia but not in a middle seat. I had a hellish experience on another wide body plane on a 14 hour flight to Asia, where they would not assign me a seat until Airport Check in and was forced to sit in the middle seat for 14 hours with two large passengers on either side of me in the middle section of five seats. I thought I was going to die.

I am reading that if you are using Northwest or Delta frequent flyer miles Korean Air will not assign seats until Airport Check in and the horrors of the middle seat will likely happen again.

I have no status miles or extra cash to upgrade to business class or ability to buy a ticket for cash.

Is this true, and would I be able to get advanced seat assignments using my Northwest/Delta miles on Delta Airlines to Asia using 60,000 frequent flyer miles?

I've had no problems getting seat assignments on Korean when using Delta miles. A quick call to Korean Air has worked for me several times. Note that I have no status, but was on a business class award ticket. If you've got the time and inclination, you can also add a free stopover in ICN.

Yeah, just like merrickdb says, call ahead for a seating assignment. Keep in mind that you can't really use seat maps (such as those on delta.com) to gauge which seats are open because they hold off a lot of them for their own (paying) customers. You never mentioned when your trip is, but if you were able to book using PerkSaver, I imagine you're far enough in advance to get an aisle.

i don't usually post, but i had the same q before i booked my NW award tix on KE. i no longer have status with NW, and never had one with KE.

mine was a mixture of coach and economy, to beijing no less, all on perksaver. was able to call KE's US reservation line and had my seats assigned in less than 2 minutes. i suggest you have seatguru handy and ask the reservation agent to call out the available aisle/window seat # until the one that suits your fancy comes up.

i've got an award on KE booked through NW as well coming up in a month or so here. After talking to a NW agent about seat assignments, I learned that I could only get them by calling KE directly. The NW agent was able to give me the KE confirmation code that I then used when contacting KE to request seat assignments.

Once on the phone with the KE agent, the process was painless and they were able to assign me the exact seats I wanted.