craz

OK not allowed to do OLCI last night or anythime today for my EWR-CDG flight. Bearly got to the check-in counter on time 5:13 for a 6:15 flight. Go thru the motions and the screen turns Orange and a message "find a CO employee who will swipe thier card and confirm somethings, OK that gets down in a few mins, going thru everything and asks if I want to change my seat from 41C, You bet I do I had 32J resevred for over a week!!! well it wont me or the Red Coat do it, cant get any other seat either. Im told to do it at the gate , I asked can it be done at the PC (as a Plat Im in on an Intl, no panhandling)

Get to the gate theres a line a mile long ( bear in mind EWR was going thru H*LL late this afternoon Weds and night Massive thunder and Lightning storms) OK exit stage left to the PC, not much better. So back to the Gate, finally my turn, I explained what happened and that I wasnt willing to fly sitting squashed in 41C so far back as the turbulence is worse back ther. Was told its that or a middle seat. I said OK no choice Pull my bag, Im not going

All I kept hearing was Sorry CO does not guanrantee any seat at any time, I said look heres my res from last week when it was tkted and it has me in 32J, I said when I checked in it was available only the kiosk wasnt letting me or the Red Coat to switch it to anything else.

Was told most likely your bag will go anyway, I said I thought if I dont fly it cant fly, no since its so close to the departure time we can let it go anyway. Duh some Security system.

Told go down to Carousel #9 it can take up to 2 hrs. I wish it did Try 4 hrs!!! Turns out I was suppose to see someone who sends someone to retrive it, so I was sitting by #9 for 3 hrs for nothing. OK finally spoke with Mr X and Im told I have to go back over to #9 and wait upwards of an hour. I do it, then I see the guy that was sent to find back at the desk , turns out he says he couldnt find it and its in the air, told by Mr x go file aclaim, sorry.

Back to baggage services as she opens a file she sees a message that my bag was sitting in the back office for over 2 hrs!

turns out teh right hand has no idea what the heck the left hand is doing, Why cause Mr X isnt given a computer to use, whats worse I wasnt the only going thru this oprdeal. Mr X kept trying to convince each person not to get their bags Retrived.

Im being to feel that CO is reading and implementing USAirs game plan!!

from 5:50pm when the GA asked that my bag be removed till 10pm no one saw anything about teh where abouts of my bag. all I kept hearing was since it was tagged to BUD most likely tahts where its going. I still cant understand why if it did fly on teh 56 CO wouldnt be able to contact AF and have them send it back on the 57 tommorrow. If it went to BUD I never would have seen it again.

J.Edward

Yikes!

Sorry to hear about the seat issue -- if you don't mind me asking, what happened with your ticket? Did CO rebook you on a later day for free (fee?) or did you simply cancel the segments and plan to apply the value to later flights?

craz

Sorry for leaving it out,

well the GA somehow knew I wasnt on a full Y and let it be known that I would lose the full amount of my tkt.

I said no way, then explained I was not only a Plat but traveling on an award tkt and being it was 25 mins to departure and the flight didnt leave as yet, I can always simply cancel it and get my miles and taxes and the CSR at the Plat desk agreed to refund me the $35 service fee since I was tkted less then 15 days before the flight.

If I didnt fly out tonight then I couldnt go till Sun and then Versailles is closed on Mondays so I wouldnt fly till Mon, by then the others would have moved on and I figured Id simply do a PRG/KRK/BUD somehow in Aug or Sept instead.

Requalified for Plat a couple of weeks ago, WHY is what Im asking myself as my last 3 Intl flights on CO have had major problems.

EWR was and still is a total zoo tonight the 54 and 138 on 7/23 are maybe leaving around 3am on 7/24. I heard that there were some flights that were diverted and then released to fly to EWR only to be diverted again due to the 2nd and much worse storm that hit EWR. Also JFK was said to be in worse condition

sbm12

Two thoughts:

First, there is a history of the seat change actions in the system. I'm not saying that anyone will actually tell you why you lost your seat, but there will be an entry in the history of the reservation that indicates who moved you and why.

Second, I am somewhat dumbfound by the fact that you chose to cancel your trip because they changed your seat assignment. I get that the one they moved you to was much worse than the one you originally had, but that seems like a crazy reason (craz-y reason??? ) to cancel a trip.

HeathrowGuy

I admit that there are trips -- especially to Europe -- that I simply would NOT have taken if I was unable to procure the exit row at the time of booking.

CALGal727

All seat assignments are "courtesy holds" only. Unfortunately it's impossible to guarantee seat assignments. CO sometimes needs to do aircraft swaps and due to multiple seat configurations it is not always possible to assign people to the same seats.

sbm12

While this is of course technically true and stated outright in many "fine print" locations, CO has a habit if making changes for one reason or another and then not being up-front with the customer as to why the change was made, often relying on obfuscation and double-speak to brush off a customer with a legitimate complaint. Should craz have lost his seat assignment? Almost certainly not. The problem is that very few of the reasons for which CO might have done this are reasonable to a customer and CO doesn't want to explain it.

I had a similar situation flying with my wife EWR-ATL. I split the PNR after getting both of us into exit row seats so that I had a chance at the upgrade. Come to find out that my wife's 14F has been reassigned to 10F. When pressed for an explanation I had to go through four different people before the agent in the PC actually admitted to me what had happened - a pair traveling together demanded seats together and moved my wife to accommodate them. Even worse is that the agent in question put a minor in an exit row by doing so. And when I asked to have my wife put back in that seat I got the "we don't move people out of seats on a whim so we can't do that for her" yet they had literally just done it hours earlier to displace her in the first place.

Maybe craz got FAM'd. Maybe it was CO doing a favor for someone else at his expense. Either way, CO will never own up to the fact that they did a disservice to a customer, whether it is within their rights to do so or not.

RNE

craz, this seat switch-a-roo happened to you as pay back for your incessant and obnoxious insults of His Lordship Lawrence Kellner ("Giant Chipmunk," indeed!) and the flawless airline he runs! How dare you, you unmitigated cretin! Oh…wait, that cretin is me!

And just imagine, CO recently bumped another passenger out of a FC seat to accommodate me! Go figure.

yad

sbm, in the situation that you describe it sounds like the if the pair travelling together is say a mother and her minor child (you mentioned one of them was a minor, right), it sounds perfectly reasonable that CO should rearrange people if necessary to ensure that they sit together. Obviously shouldn't have moved them to an exit row, but it's understandable that exceptions are made for folks in that situation.

sbm12

I agree that folks should be moved about to accommodate others as necessary, but I also think that CO should actually tell passengers that rather than lie to them. And the pair traveling together should've been given the worse seats, not the better ones, but that's a whole different story.

Like I said above, there is a history in the reservation that would explain exactly who moved craz out of his seat and probably why. Sadly CO doesn't want to share that information ever.

formeraa

Honestly, I don't blame craz for being upset on a trans-atlantic flight. I might tolerate a bad seat on a 3 hour domestic flight, particularly for a low fare. However, I recently chose NOT to take CO on a trans-atlantic flight because there were only middle seats still available. If I'm paying $1400, I want an aisle seat on a long flight.

Fortunately, on my upcoming flight, I waited a few days and snagged a $2K business class fare on LH!!! Thanks to FT'ers for pointing out this great deal!^

From NYC

Depending on the age of the minor, it just sounds like a very bad idea to put them in the exit row. I've always heard the pre-flight announcement that if the people in the exit row cannot be counted on to do the right thing in an emergency, or if there are minors, they should ask to be moved. Having to deal with a minor in an emergency situation while seated in the exit row just strikes me as wrong. I hope the folks who made the seat switch had no idea, but the GA or FA should've done something about that.

HeathrowGuy

Hey, in another thread I proposed a system where CO would adopt a modifed "European seating" approach of allowing certain premium pax to preassign while most would selecting seating at time of check-in, and the crowd roundly opposed the idea of favor of the existing paradigm.

craz

CG

a few things

1- i understand what you posted but 1- I was in Coach not BF , when I checked in at 5:13pm which I had to do, since it didnt let me do OLCI and an employee needed to swipe their card in order for me to actually check-in. Anyway both Tues night when I tried OLCI a few times and yesterday the seat map always showed me in 32J and my special meal as being ordered.

So at 5:13pm when I checked in at teh kiosk and the CO employee swipes his card, Whoa it showed me in 41C with 41 A & B taken as well. NOW 32J and 32K were "white' not Reserved = empty , yet the kiosk didnt allow us to take it, looking at the screen I saw 33D empty as well as 33E so I figured OK take that and with misconnects etc Ill end up with an empty next to me thats OK and its still by the Wings so the turbulence wont as bad as 41. again no dice.

Im told I have to change it at the Gate, head to the gate the line is 5 mile slong, OK I go to the PC (as a Plat even in coach I have access) its better but 2 mile slong. So back to the gate, when its finally my turn, Im informed 32J and K are taken and no seats with an empty next to it and nothing from 33 forwards.

So my 32J wasnt taken away and given to someone persee since it wouldnt have shown available at the Kiosk.


No equipment change had the same plane that the pda showed on Tues

craz

sorry but I disagree with You. CO can ask someone who alreay chose a seat if theyd move, but CO shouldnt simply go and move anyone who chose a seat, maybe I was traveling with someone and for whatever reason needed to be next to them and we are on different PNRs.