Originally Posted by
3Cforme
. Don't buy basic Economy fares and come back here to complain that you couldn't sit with your young children. You won't find much sympathy. Basic Economy is a choice you make.
AA's policy is that young children traveling with their parents must sit with one of the adults no matter the ticket purchased. If you buy BE for yourself and a child on the same PNR, AA seems to assign seats
at ticketing near the back of the plane (which you can change only by paying a seat fee). My wife and I and 7 year old had a few basic economy itineraries together over the last year and in every case AA assigned us seats together in one of the last rows when we bought the tickets. For last minute purchases, AA usually has a couple of blocked rows that aren't assigned until gate control so that GAs can more easily accommodate mis-connected parents/children and last minute tickets. Unlike some airlines, AA sees sitting a kid with a parent as common sense, even with BE tickets.
If everyone on the PNR are adults, seats won't be assigned until check in and most definitely likely will not be together unless you pay the choose a seat fee.
And yes, AA blocks an incredible amount of real estate for BE ticket holders (at T-24) to choose seats from and for non-elites. On some planes/routes, I know that if you are on BE or aren't Gold or better, there is maybe 2 or 3 non-MCE aisle seats in the entire cabin that aren't either sold as official 'premium' seats which require an upcharge or aren't blocked for elites (who can pick these seats for free, but a non elite can't pick them at all period).
One of the biggest bs things about AA IMO is that if a non-elite family of three buys Regular economy seats on a transatlantic months in advance when the plane is empty, they still can't pick three seats together without an upcharge to at least one 'preferred' seat or to MCE. You might as well buy BE at that point as the advertised benefit of "seat choice" with regular economy fares is a joke.
See flight AA44 for a date I randomly picked next August. The only blue seats that a non elite or a BE would be able to pick from (at T-24) are the blue ones. The x'd out back seats are all blocked (the aisle seats are blocked for elites on non-BE tickets, the back middle is blocked for AA control), The green are available for upcharge to nonelites, and the orange are MCE.
Honestly, if AA wants to differentiate Regular Economy with BE, they should give a regular economy ticket holder better seat choice.
