TechnoTourist

https://pointsmilesandbling.com/posi...elite-members/

canadiancow

Once again making things worse for SEs who buy high fares at the last minute.

Or arguably for anyone who buys high fares at the last minute.

FWIW, the POT article says "including Basic" for SE.

AC doesn't have the preferred seat sections that can accommodate this the way UA does.

There's what... a dozen preferred seats on most widebodies? The widebodies that operate numerous flights within North America...

yvr76

How do other programs handle non-preferred seats for Elite members? With Aeroplan, unless you're SE you can't even do standard seat selection without a Flex fare. It would be nice to get basic seat selection on a Standard fare for E35k or E50K+.

YOWgary

Nah. It's unreasonable to expect that prime seats be left available just in case someone wants to book Y at the last minute.

Completely agree, a policy like UA's allowing bottom-tier elites free access to Preferred seats at check-in is fine when the aircraft is equipped with enough of those seats to accommodate it.

...then again, as a person who exceeds both 6 feet and 200 pounds, I've got more than that reason to wish AC would come to its senses and add rows of non-bulkhead Preferred seats to widebodies to match its competitors.

canadiancow

Depends on the airline. But AC has, for many many years, always wanted you to pay for things like this.

I definitely disagree.

It's one thing to sell them. It's another to give them away, preventing last-minute high-fare purchasers from being able to get one.

I've flown fares that earn the SQD for 50K in one PNR. I've flown dozens (hundreds?) of Latitude fares.

I definitely have higher expectations for "good seats" than someone barely squeaking into 50K should.

And my attitude about the benefit would probably be different if every 20% of all Y seats on all types were preferred seats.

I'm not too concerned about a 7M8. I don't really like the preferred section of the 223 (it's small and it's too far back).

But all the widebodies are useless. I've bought CO/LT fares many weeks in advance and been unable to select a single preferred seat. And those were situations where my status wasn't even necessary to get one. I was "paying" for it.

canopus27

Agree that the widebodies are terrible wrt the preferred seats. If I'm flying a longhaul, then I'll almost certainly be in PY or J ... but 77X's and 78X's do pop up on short legs sometimes, certainly YYZ-YUL and more ... and it's super frustrating that the economy seat pitch available to me in a wide body is so much worse than the seat pitch available to me on a narrowbody.

CdnFlier

As someone who buys last minute Lat fares more often than I should, it is really frustrating when there's nothing remotely available (and this happens now). I guess preferred seat availability is going to get a worse on domestic flights.

yytdan

As a barely 35k member who is 6'1" tall, I also don't like this change. I would much rather have a 50% discount and be sure of my seat when I book than get it for free but have to race to check in exactly 24 hours in advance.

I started buying flex fares when I got 25k status, because then I could get the flexibility and not feel like I was breaking the bank to get a seat. (Plus more SQM 😀 ). Now I feel like I might just go back to buying standard unless I think I'll actually need flexibility.

cmill007

Feels like a half hearted attempt to make amends after the re-qual blowback.

but it’s useless for most of us, who achieve status by never buying anything below flex Y.

in fact, it’s worst than useless, because now there will be even less availability of these seats.

muskoka

This really doesnt help me very much. Unlike a lot of you high rollers, I am a 25K who flies mostly YYC-YYZ 5-6 times a year plus to OGG with the missus on a Comfort fare (which includes free preferred seats) via a Companion pass
and YVR once or twice a year and always in Y. If I want an exit row seat, which I always gladly buy when I book far in advance (and usually a basic fare but sometime Standard) Im not going to roll the dice and wait until checkin
to hope there will be an exit row seat available for free. To me this change is a non issue . Just a view from someone slightly higher up the ladder from a FOTSG.

songsc

Just want to offer another perspective, giving preferred seats to elites is better than giving them to no status people who check in late.

For me, I don’t care about my Eastern Triangle flights, but I suspect I will have a hard time getting preferred seats unless I book early on TCON. This may push me to paying PY or J more often, or flying PD.

warrens

This seems like another case of Air Canada expertly grabbing at precisely the wrong end of the problem.

It appears to suck especially badly for 50K'ers who fly international on Flex Y fare. There is typically no Comfort fare offered, so now it would seem there's no way at all to grab a seat in row 18 while booking the flight, without resorting to Latitude.

777-300ER has 30 preferred seats. Dreamliner has 18.

canadiancow

My bad. 3 rows of how many? 2 rows of how many?

Compared to the 7M8 which is what... 1/4 or 1/3 of the cabin?

This policy works on UA because they have something like 1/3, minimum, on every aircraft. And it's only pretty recently that they started selling "Economy+ fares" (in the context of this discussion, similar to AC's Comfort or Latitude fares).

My issue isn't "lesser Elites shouldn't get free Preferred Seats", it's "AC doesn't have enough Preferred Seats for this". It's a zero-sum game. Giving them earlier to lower tiers means a later-buying higher-tier just can't get one. Or a last-minute CO/LT fare can no longer get what they're paying for.

warrens

3 rows of 10 on the 777 (30/398 economy seats) and 3 rows of 9 on the 787 (18/247 seats). About 7% in both cases. But it's "the front row of each economy cabin", not like, "the front few rows of the economy cabin". Bulkhead and exit rows, basically.

It most definitely isn't an actual "Economy Plus" experience like United. That's sort of what I mean when I say AC is doing this exactly wrong. E+ is a good solution for, well, "plus-size" people, and United acknowledges this by offering a one-time annual subscription to the cabin. That's just the life situation for some people, it's not necessarily a perk or privilege.

laner

As a 50k who's over 6', if I'm sitting in Y I want to be in a preferred seat, so I'd much rather just have the 50% discount and have a greater chance at actually getting one of the seats. As Cow rightly points out, there just aren't enough preferred seats on the widebodies for this to work. Unless of course they want to remove a row of regular Y and use the space to make 7 or 8 rows of preferred seats, but somehow I don't see that happening!