• Why is my seat Unassigned?
Reservations made when there are no seats available for prereservation by the passenger will be left without a seat assignment. This does
not necessarily mean that the flight is overbooked or that the passenger will be bumped if the flight is oversold at the gate. Additional seats generally become available closer to departure as elites are upgraded from the Coach cabin (beginning 100 hours prior to departure), as Preferred seats become available for purchase (beginning 24 hours prior to departure), as Preferred Plus seats are released to airport control, and as Preferred seats are released for free at the gate. Thus, passengers with unassigned seats should check the seatmap frequently, especially within the elite upgrade windows beginning 100 hours prior to departure. FlyerTalk member
paulmcgrath has created a web tool that generates bookmarkable URLs to specific AA seatmaps:
http://thisispaul.com/aaseats/
Alternatively, the Seat Alert feature of
ExpertFlyer, a paid subscription service, can be used to alert a passenger to an empty seat automatically.
While this issue usually only arises in Coach, there is also a rare case in which a Business class seat may be unassigned on a Boeing 777-200 aircraft, because seats 8H and 8J are blocked until at least 24 hours prior to departure and may not be released until the flight goes to airport control.
Note that passengers without a seat assignment
must check in at the airport and cannot use online checkin.
AA.com:
Seating Options |
FAQ |
View Available Seats
FT:
Unassigned seat strategies (consolidated)
FT:
Direct URLs to AA seatmaps
FT:
Release of 8HJ Business class seats on Boeing 777-200