Arnur

Yes, I see your frustration and agree that the website sucks and that the treatment of OW elites regarding XL seats is problematic. I come from Star Alliance, where priority seating is almost unheard of for other carrier's elites, so I had more limited expectations. Having said that, I agreed the priority seats on a recent AA flight were a treat. At the same time, for me one of the key benefits of the XL seats on AB is the fact access is fairly restricted, i.e. most of the times the XL seat next to me is free, even on long-haul flights, which is great. So, the policy makes a lot of sense for AB's own elites (and is a key reason for me to pick them over LH on long-distance flights), but is somewhat discriminatory towards other OW elites.

lewisyu

Want to add a "me too!" here but I'm on CX award bookings and different experience.
I have five different CX award bookings on F/Z and J/U in coming 12 months. Every booking has one AB short-haul connecting flight which only offer Y (class Z).
Funny thing is that I can choose any seats in Airberlin website for the econ short-haul without charge on the four Business class redemption but not the First class one. Email sent to AirBerlin CS, no reply yet.

seawolf

Just spent 56 minutes on hold trying to obtain a non-XL seat assignment as a OW Sapphire only for agent to tell me there is a charge for Sapphire. Good thing I wasn't paying for the 56 minute call due to my mobile plan. Going to HUACA. Flying AB only because they fly non-stop DUS-JFK.

rrgg

For what it's worth, I had no wait time in the past calling on Saturday morning. Calling during the week was too much trouble.

Air Rarotonga

The AB call center in Poland (GDN) is one of the worst on the entire world. Uncompetent and very rude employees! They refused to assign me a seat with my business-class ticket on an economy only connecting flight for free. They wanted € 30.-. Employees refused to connect me with a SPVR and threw me out of the line 3 times (different humans).

And AB calls it *SERVICE* Center... Maybe they translated it wrong in polish language...

Terrible!

spongenotbob

Wow... the cheap-n-greedy attitude of this airline is not really winning me over.

I've got a similar situation.... booked 2 AA award tickets on AB, was actually able to assign 2 non-XL, non-premium seats for free on their website. So far, so good.

Then we needed to change travel dates and AA was able to acomodate and re-issue. PNR did not change. However, now when I try to select seats on the AB website, the option is greyed out, saying I must call the call center.

Call center absolutely refuses to hear a word about it, demanding $63 per seat per leg for non-XL, non-premium seat assignments. They will not even entertain the fact that their own website allowed me to select seats for free just a few days ago. Rude and hostile and completely arrogant.

So sorry, AB, I'm not paying you $504 for non-XL Y seat assignments. (2 pax * 4 legs R/T)

Any work arounds? I've tried Qatar website, etc., but they seem to be read-only. AA reservations says "the entire seat map is blocked out" and there's nothing they can do.

NB: Source of miles (me) is OW Sapphire; Passengers only have minimal status with AA (just AA credit card holders).

tropikey

I'm sorry you had such bad experience. Are you sure it was Polish call center? I'm from Poland and recently tried to contact this center couple of times but with no success. I always spoke to agents in Germany or Romania, so I'm not sure if Polish call center still exists...

PHLesq

I recently had a similar experience; spent hours on the phone being put off by 3 different agents, as well as AB's Twitter agents. Unless you have time to burn, I would just set your alarm for the beginning of on-line check-in, which I believe is 30 hours prior to departure. Be the first to select seats, clearly for no charge at that point. Good luck.