Originally Posted by
mpiotrow
I have an upcoming flight on AC, booked through the UA website. I do not have seat assignments, and am not able to select them for free on the AC website. I'm unsure of the recent posts above whether people are saying they are able to select seats (I'd like to get a Preferred Seat if possible) on AC with *G status, or if they are just describing ways to find the website that allows them to pay for their seat selection in advance. I assumed the former, but it does not seem to be working for me. I tried tweeting them, and they responded back with "Thank you. Star Alliance Gold members are subject to applicable seat fees in this case it would be 40$ per seat. You do have other benefits such as priority boarding but not preferred seating."
Does that sound correct, or should I call in to AC and see if I can get a phone agent who might be able to accommodate me?
if you’re ona Tango fare, you don’t get a seat assignment for free. Doesn’t matter your status. IIRC, some have reported receiving preferred seats, on request at the airport, but it’s never been my experience (and in fact, last time on AC, they tried to kick my wife out of her paid preferred seat. GA was useless - luckily the FA actually helped solve the problem, and then when I complained on AC.com, they just refunded it also).
Originally Posted by
laxmillenial
Why are you not able to select them on the AC website? If you put in your PNR you should pull up your reservation. The seat icon will most likely be greyed out; however, above that there should be text stating something around the following: "This reservation was booked by a third party or outside of Air Canada's website. Please click here for seat assignments".
This will take you to another Air Canada website (looks a bit older / maybe directly talking to the system) and you should be able to select seats. If you booked a tango fare, any seat assignment before T-24 will cost $20. For preferred seats, I believe it is $50. *G gets you nothing on AC except boarding group 2. They could honestly care less that you're *G.
I went through this process a few days ago; feel free to private message me and I'll help walk you through it.
neither the regular AC site nor the one for third party bookings have ever worked to get me a seat assignment. It’s been about a year since I’ve tried. Even if booked through Aeroplan, can’t do a seat assignment in the website. Really stupid.
Originally Posted by
mpiotrow
As I mentioned, I thought people were saying they were able to get FREE seat assignments for being *G, 1K, etc. I apparently read the posts incorrectly. I am able to select seats, but I thought there was a way to get them for free.
How do I know if I booked a Tango fare? I booked through the UA website...
Also, I believe the price of the seat reservations vary based on destination, or length, or aircraft. For example, one of my segments (~3hr flight on an ERJ-190) is $15 for regular seats for $40 for preferred seats. And another segment (5.5hr flight on 737-MAX) is $30 for regular seats and $100 for preferred seats.
Fees do vary by flight length. No, still not free in advance of check in, regardless of status.
Originally Posted by
KKILR3
I have a similar itinerary booked on UA. The only way I was able to tell that my AC fares were Tango was because the seat selection tool charged me for assignments, and Tango is the only fare class that does so. Oddly, on the UA portion of my trip, it is not Basic Economy and my seats were free. Somehow the combined fare classes wound up being Tango on AC but standard economy on UA.
Seat reservation fees do vary by flight length or perhaps nature of the flight. I know it was cheaper for me to choose my MSP-YYZ seat than for my YYZ-AMS seat. I don't remember the breakdown of the fees but it added up to $45 for both.
Tango -to be clear, is not a fare ‘class’, but a category of fares that could be in multiple classes. It used to be specific fare classes were Tango, others were flex, and others were latitude - but I believe they changed it and they can now be in multiple - I.e one W fare might be a Flex and a different one might now be Tango. So yeah, they’ve made this worse.
Tango and basic economy are different fare types, really - not sure why you would equate these. I would say Tango is the predeccessor to today’s BE fares. But also UA can’t sell BE if you are interlining, so you couldn’t do a BE fare on an itinerary with an AC segment, anyway.
Originally Posted by
VWang1111
Didnt realize AC started BE fares now. But Tango has never been BE (and Tango also predates BE fares on any carrier by about 15 years). Tango, since it’s introduction, well, at least until ACs true BE, has been the lowest fare option. Used to come with several options that you could use to increase the fare (add seat selection, for example) or decrease it (used to be, for example, you could forfeit bag allowance and mileage accrual), but those options, save for paying for seats, are pretty much all gone now.