NeatStuff

Booked a ticket last night and turns out my fav seat in J, 7A/K is gone. Row six is completely blocked out. I called EK and asked them if I can put in a request for 6A and he said it can only be done 24 hours before depature.

I am sure I have seen blocked seats being released on the system before that time period (saw this through experflyer). Does anyone have any experience with getting hold of a blocked seat before this 24 hour period?

Thanks a lot!

whimike

Yes, having a 6 month old baby traveling with you would do the trick! ;-)

ung1

Even when EF shows the seats as occupied (not blocked) they are sometimes blocked. A month or so ago I was on a flight and started freaking out because both 6A and 6K showed as occupied well before the flight. At the airport it turned out they were both available. Just ask at check in.

MarkLHR

Blocked seats will only be released at check-in. I've been told on the phone a few times that a particular seat is blocked and there is nothing that can be done until check-in to unblock them.

eightblack

Zol and I are trying to get to the bottom of the blocked seat issue at present with EK in DXB. Its getting worse. This weekend I flew FRA-DXB-SIN and the FRA-DXB leg I was in 7A. Someone was in 7B. Then 2 more in the middle cluster of 3 and then I think one person in 7K.

All of row 6 was blocked. Why on earth do they clump everyone together? I looked at the seat map on EF and when I went to the lounge in FRA, I simply asked the lounge agent to see if I could have 6A. There was a lot of aggressive sounding german conversation down the phone to a man somewhere as the lovely lady had to work out how to release the seat. But it all worked out well.

The same itinerary also had me in a middle seat down the back of the J cabin. If I didn't check, I would have been stuck there.

One of my pet peeves with Skywards is that Gold's cant preselect row 6 or ensure that they are never allocated a middle seat (unless they specifically request it).

NeatStuff

I am Gold and they refused to release any blocked seats saying it can only be done at check-in, the best he said they could do was send a request to the check-in desk requesting 6A for me, but this could only be done 24 hours prior to depature.

I was flying LHR-DXB and the whole of row 6 seemed to be blocked bar 6K.

I have seen blocked seats disappearing on EF and was anxious that this would happen and I would be stuck in 8A which I really do not fancy.

xEKr

Easiest thing to do is to become friendly with the ground staff or station manager at the station you usually fly from. When I was at EK I had about 5-10 frequent flyers who would always email me a couple of days before they were flying to get seats for them, either row 6 or exit rows in economy (even can be done for flights not at that station).

It always amazes me that people who travel so often through certain outstations don't take a few minutes to get to know the staff....it can help SO much for many different things!

Tim(HAM)

Very interesting thread as I am also always quite curious on how to get my preferred seats.

This happened to me before and the very nice person at check-in explained to me this happens quite commonly as other people who initially occupied specific seats change them at check in for blocked seats or change their travel plans or cancel a booking at all. Hence they become available despite being occupied before.

It is also very interesting that it is not just about bulkhead (cot) seats or e.g. 1J/1K or seats next to Gold members being blocked but sometimes even larger sections of J or Y are blocked for stretchers, groups, diplomats and as they explained to me these seats are usually released about 24 hours prior to departure.

jackiedada

That would be a great thing to have. I've never been able to allocate my preferred seats on EK201 at the time of check-in from BOM because the ground staff (all contract though) tell that these seats have been blocked by DXB and there is nothing they can do to release them.

Also, anything concrete on the rumoured upcoming 4th tier at your conversations at DXB?

Zol

Not easy to do at DXB though with the large number of staff running the place over different shifts, however frequent you may be.