Originally Posted by
YEG Guy
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.
Thanks for the detailed info, YEG Guy. It doesn't explain the rationale of why the airlines wouldn't want to pull that information into the RES system. Everything else you type into the website gets saved, so why not that? Gate agents must deal with the headaches of reassigning seats after boarding passes have been printed because parents have been separated from small children every single day. Wouldn't a single data field to prevent the problem in the first place be easier?
Originally Posted by
YEG Guy
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.
Ah, that would explain why it never used to be a problem to get seating together and now it's a huge problem unless you pre-book.