Originally Posted by
KeaneJohn
I was under the impression that Silver members could only assign seats for people on the same PNR not the same party? Also please can you explain how Silver members canTCP and what benefit this has as again it’s not something that I was aware of.. I was always under the impression TCP was for Gold members to link unrelated PNRs so that seats could be assigned
Originally Posted by
TravelManBiz
TCP (To complete party) is only available to Gold members where a gold member can assign a seat for another passenger on the same cabin but on a different PNR. Silver can reserve seats for people on the same PNR only.
Just to expand on the answer given by
windowontheAside, my understanding is that
UKtravelbear is correct, but I can see where the confusion arises - I've been guilty of it in the past and I know people tend to conflate TCP and Gold seat requests, although they are not the same thing. Corrections most welcome but this is how I understand it works:
- TCP, as stated, is available to anyone. It simply creates a manual linking between 2 bookings. In normal operations there is no practical benefit to doing this, but in IRROPS it may become useful allowing an agent to see that 2 distinct PNRs are travelling as one party, to try to keep them together etc.
- A Gold seat request for someone on same flight, same cabin but on a separate PNR is done by sending a manual request to the seating team. As a prerequisite, the agent will link the 2 bookings via TCP (as a way to let the seating team know who the other passenger is?). This facility
is only available to Gold and above.
So, since 99% [1] of "TCP requests" are actually Gold seating requests which have the TCP step as a prerequisite, people naturally tend to conflate them and will colloquially refer to the seating request as a TCP, even though it is not strictly the same thing. It is, however, less characters to type
[1] Warning: made up statistic, hat tip to
c-w-s for stealing this phrase.