Originally Posted by
4BandE
I agree that perhaps the program doesn't account for E+ subscriptions but the agent said that status (which would entitle a flyer in E+) was a not a factor in reshuffling of seats. That was the reasoning that didn't make sense. If status was not a factor then how do people get put back into E+ after an aircraft change?
"The system" appears to generally try to match seat number to seat number (7A to 7A) -- incidentally, my spidey sense tells me the odd seat numbering adopted post merger was a low-tech effort to work around this and minimize oddness for aircraft swaps within the same family (narrow body to narrow body, etc.) -- if row 21 is "always" the exit row and the system shoves you back in the seat you came from you wind up in a exit row post-swap. The most obvious way things fall apart is if that seat is unavailable for some reason (block, not existing, etc.) -- UAs somewhat recent introduction of preferred seating for corporate customers blurs this a bit and that may have driven changes in seating reassignment algorithms.
Originally Posted by
4BandE
What else besides status qualifies a flyer to be assigned an E+ seat that the system would decide upon?
So there are a few things to keep in mind here. First "the system" isn't a single monolith... There's SHARES at the bottom of the pile and lots of layers and interfaces built on top of and next to SHARES; things that govern assignment of seats manually (e.g. by an agent or through the web) don't necessarily impact automatic (re)assignments that are kicked off in a different silo -- and the reassignment silo may quite legitimately have no idea what E+ is (not saying that that's the way it should be, but that's the way it seems to be)
Second there are so many ways someone can wind up in an E+ seat -- the vast majority actually don't involve a discreet payment for the seat :
- FQTV Status
- Paid E+ one-off purchase**
- Paid E+ subscription
- FQTV Companion (on or off PNR; off PNR by manual intervention) -- e.g. my wife is traveling on a MP ticket and I have a revenue ticket. Called res and they put her next to me manually without charge (allegedly documenting the PNR 'in case anyone needs to know why I didn't charge you' but that actually happens maybe 50% of the time)
- Corporate contract fares where E+ has been negotiated
- Disability accommodation by the special services desk (particularly, e.g. bulkhead and aisle seats with movable armrests)
- Certain special services at agent discretion (traveling with a large musical instrument as cabin baggage being the one that immediately comes to mind)
- Closer to departure, BE and Y passengers without an assigned seat if either the agent is in a good mood or those are the only seats left (or a combination of both)**
** so here's another place that seems to illustrate that E+ is not a core part of the customer service/seat assignment flow. For an agent working in SHARES directly (vs. eg. the Aero overlay which I don't know about) there doesn't seem to be any environment-forced enforcement for E+ fee collection. That is to say from what I've observed SHARES doesn't seem to know/care if the agent is assigning a passenger to an E+ seat out of necessity (no charge) or by request (possibly a charge or not) and when a charge applies that appears to be a separate workflow to collect the charge... But I could be hallucinating