Egypt Air - Can I Preassign seats?

Hi,

I have a colleague who is flying economy from FRA to Cairo & back with his family (wife plus 3 kids), and he was hoping to pre-assign seating to keep the family together (and hopefully have decent seats). I had a look on the Egyptair website for him with his reference number, and while his booking details come up ok, I can't see a way to pre-assign seating. Does anyone here know:

a) if it is possible and
b) if so, how?

My colleague is a Miles & More member (Blue).

Thanks,

J

My travel agent has been able to do this, but I don't know that you can do it yourself online.

I called Egyptair reservations (I live in the USA) and they were able to reserve seats for the two of us, traveling on the same PNR. I have Star Alliance Gold status but that seemed irrelevant to the process. My preferred seats (exit row) could only be assigned at the airport, or so I was told.

At a later date, I noticed that one of our reserved seats got inexplicably reassigned. When I called again to re-request the seat, the telephone agent stated she was only able to make an initial seat assignment but was unable to *change* seat assignments. "This could only be done at the airport." This seemed unusual to me since changing seat requests is routine on US carriers, but it reinforced the notion that MS is a bit behind the times technologically.

So, call the reservations staff to request the seat assignments, then monitor your reservation record (PNR) to ensure that the seat assignments have not been lost.

I also could not pre-assign seats online. (gonig BEY-CAI-SSH, SSH-CAI). Called and was told that they can assign seats, except for itineraries that were domestic only.

Seat assignments on MS are a shambles imho (I've taken 4 MS intercontinental flights recently).

Can't do it online, and calling Res usually doesn't work. I've discovered that (in Y at least) your best bet is to get a seat near the very back of the plane (which they fill up last), so you will probably find a seat with a free seat or two next to it.

Using this approach, I've had a whole row of 3 or 4 seats to myself on every flight.

But otherwise, a complete shambles!

I used SA Voyager miles to book an award ticket on MS. SA issued and were able to assign seats on all 4 MS legs. I could then see the seat reservations (but not change them) on the MS web site - and they were never changed.

So it seems your booking agent can reserve seats. If you booked online I guess you should call MS reservations.

I noticed this same thing recently, though when I requested that I get a window seat via the Lufthansa web site, I was able to at least have a seat assigned, which wasn't too bad. I dunno if it's because I connected to MS via LH or whatnot, but I found it quite odd.