Yesterday I booked one of AC's very attractive international fares and as usual made my seat selections: forward "preferred" economy cabin, aisle seat in the centre block one or two rows from the bulkhead (best chance of having an empty seat next to me). However, after confirming the seat selection on the closing screen, the seats that shoed up were completely different. So I tried twice more to change them to the ones I wanted, but still nothing happened.

What's going on with AC's seat booking software? Other than calling reservations (and paying $30?) how can I get my selected seats?

Anyone else notice this problem on their bookings yesterday?

I don't think they would charge you for selecting seats only, if you booked the ticket online.

This has been happening to me on the site for the last couple of months -- three or four flight bookings.

I'm just curious about your theory on this... why would the two rows behind bulkhead would have a higher probability of an empty seat?

This has happened to me in the past, too. I usually call AC and have an agent do the selection for me. They've never charged me anything for it.

I had a similar situation two days ago. Booking a flight YEG to YVR. Logged in, made my booking and first available seat was row 19. I found it hard to believe that rows 12 to 18 were completely spoken for 6 weeks out on this route, but sometimes it happens. Also checked to make sure that I was logged in as I know that lots of time these seats showed blocked for non E & SEs. So I took the aisle in row 19. When I got my itinerary minutes later by email lo and behold I had a middle seat in row 27. So I logged back into my account and went to change the seat. When I did, row 12 was completely occupied, but the seat map showed only one person in rows 13 to 19. So I chose an aisle in row 14 and got a new emailed itinerary that was correct. So, if it happens again, try going in through online booking and changing your seat yourself.

Nope, got 19C outbound and inbound YYZ-LHR a few minutest ago on the first try. Hope I didn't take your picks SH!

I tried changing the seats twice and they still defaulted to the same ones randomly assigned. Booked another flight today and the same thing happened, and no matter how many times I tried to make the change on line, no change took. I will be calling AC tomorrow to get this rectified. Very frustrating.

They've never done this in my experience, with both reward and revenue tickets.

Cheers,
bawm

Ditto for me SH, I did it a couple of times this year with online bookings. I just called the regular reservation line and asked for a specific seat and they did it 'no questions asked - no charge'.