Originally Posted by
FliesFromCanada
Aside #1: Kids get zero discount on tickets. So...why bother even asking for ages when booking flights if that information won't be used to make logical seating arrangements? Like the woman above who got upgraded, leaving two small children on the same itinerary behind in economy.
AC.com and WJ.com both ask for childrens ages using ranges of 0-2, 3-12, 12-15. The websites use this information to enforce certain booking rules:
1) Adult to infant ration must be greater than 1:1.
2) If a child is selected between 3-12, they must have an adult with them greater than 16 years of age.
3) tweens can book by themselves, but cannot be used in place of an adult for infants or children.
These rules are booked into the website code, I am not certain, but I believe the selection of children or tweens will not be passed to the Reservation system. Selection of Infant is used to generate the infant fare code.
Non-advanced Seat Selection is completed using the Reservation System, but the RES system cannot handle the distinction between adult and children, so it will not force individuals on the same PNR to sit together.
Checkin is completed by a separate day fo flight module withint the CRS system. Checkin pulls information from RES, but because RES does not have a field for Children, the checkin and gate agents cannot reassign seats based upon this indicator.
Prior to charging for seat selection, Westjet ran a batch job 72 hours before flight to assign PNRs greater than 3 to a single row of seats. However this functionality was dependant upon no passengers being assigned seats (e.g. need 1ABC to be available). When advance seat selection was made available the batch job was ended.