There have been some threads about changes to seat allocations.

I wrote to AA about a number of incidents that had affected myself and family; including changes in seat allocation. Yesterday I had a phone call from a supervisor in AA Dublin about the points I raised.

One of these problems was on AA95 & AA96; a service I use frequently. These are the Coach only 757 MAN-BOS-MAN flights where elites can book in the front domestic FC cabin.

Both myself(PLT) and Blueboys999 (who posted that the same thing had happened to him twice) have found our seat allocation changed several times – once within the FC cabin, but on other occasions put to the back of the plane.

This supervisor had investigated and apparently found the reason. If there is any change to the itinerary, however minor, the computer can re-allocate seats. In the case of AA96 he told me that after I had booked the seats the flight timing changed from 8:35pm to 8:30pm(I confirmed this by looking at my original receipt) and thus the computer gave away my seats.( I assume this was the case for Blueboys)

For AA95 the reason was that the flight was originally just MAN-BOS but became MAN-BOS-MCO and the same thing happened to my seat allocation.

I managed to get re-instated to the FC cabin every time, but Blueboys(who is an EXP) found himself in the back of the plane because by the time he noticed the change, his seats had been reallocated.

A further incident was a change in Flight No(again after I had booked) of a 3:15pm flight from ORD to MCO. The supervisor confirmed that this change of itinerary was the reason my wife and I were moved from this 3:15 flight to a 7:30pm flight; again after noticing the change(we were not notified) we got re-instated.

I tend to book all my seats well in advance and minor changes in schedule are a quite frequent occurrence.

To pre-empt the usual comments; I am aware that seat allocation is not guaranteed. However it seems to me quite extraordinary that a 5 minute change in flight timing can cause elites(or anyone) to lose a booked and paid for seat.