Ann Tyrol

Travel agent has just confirmed a reservation on Cathay, and the itinerary notes that the seats are 44B and 44C in the 747-400 and 54H and 54K in the Airbus A340-300.

We are both AM and MPC members (lowly Green) but I am wondering whether these would actually be confirmed seats? I was under the impression that these seats were not allocated until checkin (I could be wrong there though).

Have the travel agents simply requested them, or are they ours (no matter what time we check in?). The itinerary says nothing about whether the seats are confirmed /reserved / requested.

Anyone know?

Cheers
AT

christep

I am normally able to reserve legroom/exit seats with my flight reservation. There's always a small risk you could lose them if a Diamond member or someone makes a big enough fuss, but I think that is very rare. Otherwise they are yours unless at check-in the agent determines that you don't meet the criteria (able-bodied, etc.) for exit seats. (Or unless there is an equipment change, in which case sometimes you keep legroom, sometimes you don't.)

Ann Tyrol

Thanks for that - we are an able bodied couple! If we get booted, I'll be sure to kick the shins of the CX Diamond member in MY seat as I walk past...

marcuslai

excellent seats ! kudos to your TA. the chances of hanging on to them are quite good, i'd say > 95%. but just to feed ur paranoia, besides worrying about elites booting you, u might also want to watch to equipment changes.

Ann Tyrol

It did strike me as almost too good to be true, that's why I was wondering if it was just a "seat request". I guess an MPC boot or a plane change are two things out of my control, so I'll just cross my fingers and hope.

Guy Betsy

As long as one of you holds a MPC card (abeit even a Green one), you won't get booted out of your seat.

On some flights, TAs have the capability of assigning Emergency Exit row seats as it shows up on their CRS. On some flights, they are blocked.

Perhaps that's when you TA decided to call CX res and they realised that one of you is a MPC member, and unblocked these premium seats for you.

A small word of caution.. these seats, although have ample legroom, have fixed armrests. Which mean you can't lift them up. The armrests therefore restrict width.. and if you have a slightly wide , er , girth, might find these seats a little 'tight'.

Enjoy your flight.

Ann Tyrol

Just to revive an old thread, a few follow up bits and pieces:

I checked on checkmytrip.com and we hadn't been given the seats that were on our bookings. So, I called MPC and asked them to see if we could get the ER seats that had originally been requested.

MPC were fantastic about it, and changed the booking to make the ER seats confirmed seating for both legs. FYI one of us is Silver and one is Green (but on Silver after this trip). Unfortunately that does mean only one of us is eligible to hit the lounge beforehand - a shame.

One final question - the 54HK seats on the 34C seem to be good ones, although the Cathaytalk thread and Seatguru seem to differ on the legroom of the K seat. CTalk says "very limited legroom" for the 54K, whereas Seatguru says that the legroom is only slightly hindered.

Can anyone shed some light on this please? Since we are travelling together, it's no problem if we intrude on each other's leg space, but if the 54K legroom is "very limited", I might consider changing it this afternoon to a different ER seat.

Thanks!
AT

christep

On the Airbus 54 A/K are not too bad if you're travelling with the person next to you. I wouldn't want to be there otherwise though. The shorter-legged should take the window seat obviously. You are adjacent to baby seats though so you run the risk of that being a problem, but otherwise I would say 54A/C or 54H/K are the best seats for a couple travelling together in economy on the Airbus (provided that neither of you is so wide that the slightly narrower, fixed armrest seats are a problem).

The only seat that I know of on the CX fleet which I wouldn't want under any circumstances are the 44A/K on the 747 which have a box big enough for a raft very close in front of them.

IceTrojan

I agree about that raft... I do now recall flying on an OZ 744 last year in the exit row, and while the pitch may be different, that raft really intrudes like 85% in front of the A/K seat.

I took note from my aisle seat. The A guy had his knee up against the box.

Ann Tyrol

Thanks for additional comments re ER seats. Happy with what we've got, and am v stoked that we scored 44B/C on the way back. I guess the 54K block isn't going t be too much of a problem as we are flying together. If it does become a pain, we can always swap halfway, no big deal.

Feeling a bit less pained about the longhaul trip now, knowing that no one will be reclining into us 2 minutes after takeoff...

Oh - neither of us are particularly wide, so the narrow seats weren't ever going to be an issue.

Cheers
AT

christep

Just an update on this. I'm not sure about the 343, but on the 330 I recently did a sector in 54C and frankly the box in front of 54A was more intrusive than I remembered. I'm not sure I would want to be in a couple with those two seats even for short haul. I have a feeling though that this may even be a bit specific to which of the A330s (the size of the box may vary). I was on one of the ones of which there are 4 according to the Safety card (B-LAA, LAB and a couple of others if I remember correctly - I'm sure one of the spotters will be along in a minute with the details ).

Coming back I was on a 777-200 - one of the ones that has been refitted with the LED lighting etc. And I have to say that row 54 on that is excellent. The bulkhead seats in the middle (54D,E,G) have an enormous amount of legroom - at 6'3" I really had to stretch to just touch the wall with my toe. And 54ABC are fine - the box is in front of 54A, but it is at the perfect height to put your legs up on.