When will blocked seats open up?
 

Flying BOS-ORD next Wednesday, definitely the cheapest flight I've ever bought ($49 roughly a month in advance).

I typically fly DL and hate AA's practice of blocking out most of the window/aisle seats to non-elites. According to EF most of the seats are open. When (in your experience) do seats typically open up? Thanks.

They supposedly usually open up at T-24 but as a frequent flyer between ORD and BOS, in most of my recent experiences I have seen that the seats actually opened up at T-12 while other routes I have flown have opened up at T-24.

Loving these cheap fares between ORD and BOS, I too am flying BOS-ORD in a week for a $54 ticket.

Unfortunately anywhere from T-24 to T-12 depending on the aircraft and route. It's annoying.

I thought the cheapest Delta tickets do not allow any advanced seat selection.

On routes where Basic Economy (E fares) exist, this is correct. Not all routes have E fares, and these fares are easily avoidable if you don't want to be stuck with the E fare conditions (delta.com provides you a dire warning about the downsides of E fares and makes you affirm you are okay with the restrictions).

The OP's complaint appears to be that, without AA FF status, the vast majority of non-middle seats are not selectable in advance on any coach fare (*This may not be true for the most expensive AA coach fare classes like Y and H, which I think might be eligible to select preferred seats.)

It's pretty easy to avoid those dreadful E fares, usually it's ~$10-$20 more to get a fare with a lot less restrictions.

Got it. Thanks.

Since the fare was only $49 from BOS to ORD you could pay the fee for a better seat. It would be like paying a little more to avoid the Delta Basic Economy situation. I would think it is really a matter of the price and not really the ability to pick better seats.

Of course it is easy for me to say since I am Platium and I can pick any seats without paying extra on AA.

I would never buy the Delta Basic Economy and I have seen difference of more than $10-$20 on Delta.

AA would love to sell you a MCE seat for slightly more money as well. It's annoying, but it's no different than what DL is doing. Want something? Pay for it.

A question, wouldn't one be able to view all available seats when searching for the specific date and flight using this:

https://www.aa.com/travelInformation...false&from=Nav

It's not for me... it's still showing all the aisles + windows blocked that EF is showing as available.

Never used EF but how accurate and how often is the data on EF updated? With the view seat map on aa.com, how do you tell if it's blocked vs someone actually selected that seat?

I trust EF in this case because AA has had nearly all of the seats blocked when they were still selling tickets for ~$50 months ago.

AA used to be pretty good about releasing seats at T-24. Lately, though, I'm noticing that it's more likely to be much closer to departure time (T-12 or later).

EF updates seat maps in near real time through a call to AA systems. If I change my seat on AA.com, and then immediately check on EF, the change is reflected.

On AA.com, you can't tell if the seat has been assigned, or blocked. On EF, you can.

This probably isn't 100% the best thread for this, but I'm having an interesting experience this morning. I'm flying JFK to LHR on AA 142, I booked myself in row 17, the last row of Main Cabin Extra in hopes that I wouldn't be seated next to anyone and could stretch out.

I've been refreshing the seating map and noticed within the last hour that the seats next to me weren't available to select, so I assumed that someone had been seated next to me. I also noticed that one seat opened in J, so I went to an AAngel at the Flagship First lounge to see if there's anyway I could get a LFU into that seat--I did this before even checking ExpertFlyer for C inventory, because I wanted to pounce on it before anyone else could.

The AAngel let me know that there wasn't C inventory, but she also let me know that there weren't actually people seated next to me in 17--those seats are blocked. I checked ExpertFlyer and sure enough, she was correct.

While I'm happy with the outcome, I'm surprised that those seats went from being available to being blocked within T-4 hours.

Crossing my fingers that no one else pops anyone into those seats!