Originally Posted by
Betula
But it also seem to depend on the ground staff of your departure location.
Only once the flight shifts to airport control 24h prior to departure. Before that, local ground staff has nothing to do with seat assignments.
In the case of tour groups, most likely they have their seats assigned by their travel agent at the moment of booking.
Web booking seat assignments (at time of booking) are certainly not done by departure point ground staff.
But when I last tried to change my assignments for a longhaul flight to LAX in Y they told me that it is not possible anymore to select specific seats in advance, only via OLCI.
That is true for general passengers AFAIK, but not for status holders. I had no problem last week calling LX and assigning an exit row seat on the A332.