Eujeanie

Last night, around midnight, I cancelled and rebooked some flights from paid to mileage. Wanted to get the same seats back.

They did not go back into inventory immediately after cancellation, nor did they go back over the next hour or so of checking.

This morning they are STILL not back into inventory.

It's almost impossible that someone would have wanted those exact 4 seats, which are an odd configuration (back to back rows, middle and window), especially since I have kept checking.

I called AS and was told that that is what must have happened, because those seats are "still attached" to a reservation...even though I have cancelled and gotten the money in my wallet already (immediately). Checking the old confirmation number says the res is indeed cancelled.

They say they can't look and see what the name is on the reservation to which they are attached.

They agree they should have gone back into inventory immediately.

Not the end of the world but very, very strange.

beckoa

Weird.

Best in these cases to change the seat assignment first I suppose.

Eujeanie

Not sure what you mean...I booked the new (miles) reservation, then I cancelled the old (cash) reservation.

But I found out what did happen - and it WAS because someone grabbed those strange seats, in the middle of the night, seconds after they were released. Is that something Expert Flyer or one of those programs would do? Why in the world would they want THOSE seats?

The reason I know is that I had to call on something else, and asked her to look again at this flight - she said she could see a name associated with those seats, and it was not ours or our kids (I thought the other one was wrong that they couldn't see any name, because at the Gate they often call you up if they want to change your seat for some reason).

So I'm guessing it was EF - but why THOSE seats? The plane is almost empty. We only wanted them to have our kids right in back of us (we're in the exit row).

formeraa

That is very strange -- but could be one of the corporate reservations systems as well. Beckoa was suggesting that you should have changed the seats in the original reservation before canceling it. Then, the seats may have been available for your new reservation.

Eujeanie

I'm really dense today...changed the seats to what? I had the seats I wanted in the original reservation - 18EF/19EF. Have had this reservation for months, using cash. I made the new reservation (using miles), skipped picking seats because I was going to put those back onto the new one (they would not have been available at that time, still attached to the old reservation)

Then I cancelled the old reservation. Thought the seats would be back on the seat map. This was minutes after cancelling the old reservation. They never appeared They have been gone since that time.

So now we're in Row 17, and our grandkids are in 20 and 21. Not the end of the world, but very odd how those seats were scooped up immediately. Seriously, the flight is practically empty, it is not until April. I could see if it were for say, next October, and someone was waiting to glom on some flights the minute they came available. But April? That's why it had to be an automated program that grabbed them in the middle of the night the nanosecond I cancelled them.