Originally Posted by tourguide
First of all, i discovered that, by booking the open jaw, my flights were booked in
Q and therefore i got 100 pct miles. About 8 days later, i happened to be at Schiphol
airport and went to KLM ticketoffice for a print out of the booking. Also, i asked for
certain seats and got 11C both ways, no problem. I believe that, if you FB number
is properly in the booking, every reservation employe should have access to the
preferred seats of your flights. Of course, in theory it is possible that all your
preferred seats are already occupied, depending how fully booked the flights are
right now. But the story about seats being blocked until check in.... i don't buy
that, except for emergency exits and bulkheads maybe. Maybe they confuse
these seats with preferred seats for elite passengers... I would call again and
ask for a supervisor if the agent gives you an unsatisfactory answer.
Thanks for your input...I called KLM booking again, and this time I got yet another answer. However: I got my seat!^ ^
It did take me three attempts, though.
Talked to a really helpful KLM telephone-booking agent on the Norwegian side.
Learned quite a bit...
It seems that the seat map for the KLM booking agents
on the telephone is different from the ones at the airport: At the airport (after what my friendly KLM-person told me) they can see every seat - if itīs actually booked or not, but the people who staff the phones cannot see if a seat is just blocked instead of booked.
The trick is to get them (the ones on the phone) to get you out of your assigned seat and try each and every seat preference you have to see if it goes through.
At least the person I talked to this time around understood that he had to actually change my reservation from my assigned seat, in order to see if the seat was free.
The other KLM people I talked simply stated that my preferred seat was 1) sold, 2) blocked...
Interesting, also, that when I tried to seat my travel companion next to me, the machine refused. It would not give a reason, but itīs probably because my friend is Ivory, not elite. Either that, or the seat is booked. The telephone people doesn`t know, you have to go to the airport to get the hard facts.
To sum up:
1. I`m getting into my car right now - to go to the airport...
2. When trying to get your preferred seat at time of booking - make absolutely sure they understand you`re elite.
3. Tell them to take you out of your assigned seat (if you already have one) and actually try and place you in your preferred seat.
4. It helps to know which seat you want (the KLM system is poor at knowing wich seats are actually good - which is worrying: they should give all elites that asks for it a good seat, not just the ones that knows the plane), so check seatguru.com or expertflyer.com (The person I talked to actually told me that the KLM seat map he got on his KLM-screen, was wrong (!) when he compared it to seatguru.com! He first tried to talk me out of a particular seat because he thought it was the middle seat, when it actually was aisle. Unbelievable that KLMs own seat map is misleading!!)