Originally Posted by
Modern 49er
I, too, have had terrible seat assignments on *A partners (last row next to the lav on LH intra-Europe flights more than once, middle seats in last few rows on SK, etc. etc.). UA is just the same as the others--unless you are UA elite, *A status doesn't seem to matter. In fact, it sometimes seems almost as if: "Your airline treats our elites like non-status pax, so we'll do the same to you."
But, what bothers me more, is that the entire *A system doesn't seem to be integrated much more than marketing and code share. I've had to wait over an hour at LH CS in FRA because "you made your reservation via UA and, well, they use a different reservation system, and we can't locate the record on our system..." Hasn't the *A partnership, and especially UA-LH cooperation, been around long enough to develop IT systems that can talk to each other?
I've actually had very good luck on LH the last few times for seat assingments. I was able to call LH and get good seats. Also, for intra-europe flights, they fill the plane back-to-front, this is due to the variability of C on those flights. If they started at the front of the plane, they would have to reaccomodate seats if they sold a bunch of C tickets. The best strategy is to call LH the day prior to your flight and request a seat.
*A does have a plan to move to a common reservation system. I always call UA and ask for the record locator for the *A partners on my reservation. If you had that, you could have given it to the LH people and saved a lot of time. (not that I'm saying it should be your responsibility, it's a CYA move, just in case...)
To the OP - my guess is that you are suffering from the "no *G in E+" effect. E- is full, so they won't assign you a seat in E+ until you get to the airport. A bit shameful if you ask me.