Originally Posted by
michelw
I might have missed this somewhere else but I just got a call from a colleague who was at the airport and asked to be moved to an EC seat on IAD-AMS. She is FB Plat. The lounge person did it but informed her that the rules were going to change March 1, 2013. Does anyone know if this is true and what the new rules are?
In the context of the conversation as reported, perhaps it just means that the lounge agents will not in future be allowed to change seat assignments?
I had the bizarre situation at the end of last year of having tried to move myself out of an Economy Comfort Seat to sit further back with a friend who happened to later book on the same flight as me. This could not be done online, so I rang up, and the KLM agent was able to move me back. Problem solved, or so I thought. I happened to look at the reservation again a few days later, and I had been magically moved forward again into the Economy Comfort zone. It didn't seem worthwhile ringing again to ask to be moved again as it seemed likely I would just be moved again automatically later.
At check in (we had bags, but had already checked in online which may have been a mistake!), I asked the check-in agent if I could be moved back to a "normal" seat. This was at the SkyPriority check-in area at Schiphol. The agent there said she was not able to change seat assignments, and directed us to the blue check-in kiosks, being adamant that that was the only way either of us could change our seat assignments. (She may even have told us to try in the lounge, she said something along the lines of the checkin staff not being able to do anything other than put tags on bags). I found that hard to believe. As it turned out, the flight was fairly full so there weren't any "free" seats left for me to choose from, and we decided it wasn't worth paying €50 to move the other guy forward.