Originally Posted by
tide
This is a known problem due to the apparently Mickey Mouse setup between US and NH. I've run into this a couple times. The problem appears to occur when the NH flight is coded as a UA flight number. Doesn't matter if it is 016 (UA) or 205 (NH) stock
You won't be able to pull up the reservation on ANA's website using the NH record locator (not a middle name issue - I have none). If you call them, NH agents will initially say they can't touch it - only UA can. However if you call UA in the USA, they are clueless.
I have been successful in fixing this by calling NH and asking them, in turn, to call United to assign the seats. The UA agent "sends a message" to NH and the seat is thereby assigned. Oh, and in cases when I have done this I have called ANA in Japan (who call UA Japan) but that's just because I do these types of things off hours when the ANA office in CA is already closed. I don't know for sure if it is only the UA agents in Japan who know how to do this.
Frustrating, I know, but at least I have a workaround that's worked for me.
I have answered a similar post in the UA forum a while ago.
UA agent is not clueless, it really depends on who you talked with. However most sCO agents are clueless in this matter, as in the past before the merger, sCO didn't codeshare that many flights with NH. From my experience, if you purchased a flight on sCO that has NH legs in it, e.g. sCO IAH/EWR-NRT connect to NH NRT-HKG, the NH leg NRT-HKG will show as real NH flight number 911, instead of CO xxxx. sUA however had codeshared NH 911/912 for years since sUA terminated the NRT-HKG service. (If you are a long time sUA flyer, you should remember the 744 then 777 service)
So after that when UA started codeshare on that NH flight, I had noticed the seat assigned is always in the back of Y and I wonder why. Once upon a time, a sUA agent finally answered my question. As she explained, when there is codeshare, like UA (or any airlines) purchased only certain rows on the NH flight for people that bought the ticket as codeshare, and it is usually in the back of Y. (I forgot exactly how many rows and from what to what, it was like 5 or 6 rows from row 32 to row 37 something like that on the 763) Therefore, even when you call UA to assign your seat, UA agent can only change your assignment within those rows, nothing further to the front of Y. However, when you obtain the NH PNR code from UA,
once online checkin available with NH, then you can log in to the NH website, you will be free to change any seats that you want other than those codeshare rows, that include bulkhead and exit rows.