I booked a coach class ticket with an Asia Miles award online for travel XMN-HKG and also purchased a M class ticket HKG-SFO online. For the award ticket I forgot to select a seat, actually I didn't even notice if selecting a seat was an option. When I purchased the HKG-SFO (CX872, 5/27) ticket online I selected a window seat as only center and window were showing as available for seat assignment. My prefrence is isle. I called N. America reservations this morning and the agent told me that because the XMN-HKG flight is from an award redemption, seat assignments can only be made using online check-in before the the flight or at the airport upon check-in. I've never heard of this before. Then I asked to see if any isle seats are available HKG-SFO and they said that I had a seat assignment already and that it could not be changed until online check-in or day of departure at the airport. I find these polices to be strange. Can anyone confirm this is correct or did I get an agent that was lazy?

Without Marco Polo membership or oneworld status that is the policy. YB fare classes (and all First & Business) get Advanced Seat Reservation. HKLMV get restricted ASR (as you have). Economy awards don't get ASR without status.

Before I got status, back in 2005, and I had called up for seats, I was actually told that (at least in the economy cabins), 25% of the seats can be pre-selected by anyone. Once that allottment has filled, the remaining seats can only be pre-selected by MPC/oneworld Elite. The reason I'm sure this is true is that on my first CX roundtrip flight without status, I was able to pre-select by calling MPC as green member. My second CX roundtrip flight without status, I was given the above reason and had to select at the airport. 2 flights qualified me for Silver (JFK-HKG) and from that point on I get my choice.