Gig103

*A isn't alone in that. British Air (OW) charges for seat assignments, and there are far more "bad" seats in Club World (their J cabin) than what I'm seeing on the LX seat maps.

Exleftseat

Seems like LX and BA are now the only carriers charging for C seat reservation. Although BA charges for all, while LX seems to be limited to the throne. This is a new direction they are going and I have a feeling that these two airlines will very soon be joined by the rest of them.

Example : I was ready to pull the trigger on a BA C sale BKK-AMS at $ 1,500 a piece r/t. So for
two pax the total amounted to $ 3,000. But then add 400 Euros for seat reservation and it's about
a little less than an additional 15 percent. Of course you don't have to make a seat reservation and wait until T-24, but then sitting together as a couple or avoiding the two center seats in a 4 seat row is not guaranteed.

Kacee

Seat choice is especially important with a cabin configuration like BA's. They're basically capitalizing on the crappiness of their J cabin.

BA currently leading race to the bottom among the legacy/flag carriers.

WorldLux

On the other hand: Two TATL in C + a connection in C to Europe makes you BA bronze and thus allowing you to select seats in advance (a week IIRC). For anyone flying BA long haul in C at least once a year, it's not going to be an issue.

I would too. Recently I had a bad experience on LX on the way back from HKG. OS to NRT (late 2015) was far more pleasant and gave me an occasion to stop off in Vienna. YMMV.

JVPhoto

I'm on award tickets LAX-VIE-BUD and TXL-VIE-LAX and didn't get charged to select a throne seat so if you're booking paid I don't see a problem.

I flew LX J NRT-ZRH and didn't think it was anything special, couple that with the crappy F seat I had on the A340 ZRH-SFO and I don't feel much urge to do LX again if I have too. Plus, I am excited to try the OS catering.

I will possibly switch one of the flights to LH F if it opens up in the travel window closer to the dates.

avi8tir

question... if I pay the $199 for the seat on LX, but then cancel my UA award reservation, is that $199 refunded?

WorldLux

https://www.swiss.com/ch/EN/book/con...l#t-page=pane2

seat38a

Flying Swiss next month in paid J. I logged in to see what it showed for the throne seat and it showed that it would cost me $199.00 each way extra for those seats. There are 4 of us traveling so I reserved paired seats couple months ago. Makes sense. If they are going to be charging paid J class passengers, I don't see anything wrong with charging for redemption tickets.

Moderator2

Same experience here. Booked VIE-LAX on an award recently, and had no problem grabbing an OS throne for my wife. I'm happy sitting across from "the princess" in the center.

Eastbound our award is LAX-ZRH on LX, and no throne seats even showed available. So no idea if they were going to try and extort $199.

Exleftseat

Bummer, they dropped the route last year. now HKG is the farthest they go and not easy to connect out of NRT.

S.R

I have a paid J ticket on LX for GVA-JFK, which I booked through UA. I called LX today to request one of the throne seats, by paying for it of course. But the agent told me it cannot be done unless UA changes the flight numbers to true LX flight numbers. Is that true? Or should I try calling and asking a different agent?

mherdeg

Hmm. I flew in paid J on LX in fall 2014 and saw some non-blocked "throne seats" on ZRH-BOS which were available for selection. I know that a lot of those seats were reserved for elites only (and now elites or buy-ups only).

Other times that airlines have charged for specific J seats:

* BA notably charges for upper-deck 747 seat assignments.

* When UA operates a three-class 777 which is sold as 2 classes of service, they sometimes allocate the GlobalFirst seats to Global Services passengers but do not otherwise make them available for assignment. If you are a J pax and ask very, very, very insistently, UA may offer to seat you in the F cabin with F seats and J service for about $2900 (I once asked very insistently but didn't end up taking the offer).

* When LH was removing their best-in-the-sky "seat and a bed" 744 F configuration, they sometimes operated a 744 with J service but let you pay €499 to sit upstairs.

findark

I believe it's actually an issue of the LX (and all LH group) systems being unable to collect fees on an 016 ticket so I'm not sure native flight number helps. It's the same problem for seat selection in Y on LH flights.

og

No. Not all BA pax are charged for seats. As a OWE (QF), I am not charged for seats - whether in Business or Economy - and that includes exit rows.

narvik

No luck even selecting seats (UA Business Award flight, EWR-ZRH, 016 ticket):

"Reserve seat
This option is not available for your flight"


Side note: and I had difficulties logging it at first. Apparently SWISS requires a middle name to be entered without space, such as: Frank Brian Smith as Frankbrian Smith