Seminole_Kev

What causes you to get "seat request" tickets? I find it kind of a pain and after finally getting a seat confirmed right at boarding time (middle seat of 3, with a big guy next to me naturally) anything I can do to get a seat quicker, or avoid "seat request" altogether would be great.

Recent one was, got to airport early (ORD > ATL > MCO run) and was offered an earlier flight from the kiosk. It wouldn't let me assign seats and spit out "seat request" tickets for both legs. Crown Room people can't give you a seat and it has to go to the gate agent to do, which takes awhile and apparently they have windows of time to deal with it (as you can tell, I'm unfamiiar with this seat request process)

If it is because it was over sold, why would it let me on those flights to begin with? Not sure what drives the seat request thing.

Marylou

Some seats are held back for elites and "special needs" passengers. If you're not at least Silver you're at the mercy of the gate agent if you're booking late.

Seminole_Kev

I'm Gold with Delta. Just curious as to what all is involved with it.

FrontRow

If you're Gold, you will almost certainly get a seat. If I recall correctly, there are about 5% of the seats held back after a certain time prior to the flight. These are held for a number of reasons, and some reasons are for status flyers who are late-bookers or re-booked from other flights (due to flight delays, cancellations, or their own re-scheduling).

I don't think the GA really has too much effect on FOs, GMs, or PMs. You go right to the top of the standby list based on status. Just look for your name on the Cleared List when you get to the gate. I'm PM and had a late-book (day before) flight a few weeks back and got a seat request. I was on the cleared list before I even reached the gate (aisle seat; informed by the GA at the kiosk), and eventually cleared for an upgrade to first.

MM/PM widget

If you get a "seat request" boarding pass (this is not a ticket) when you check in for your flight it means #1 you did not request a seat when you purchased your ticket(s) #2 you purchased your ticket(s) so late that all available seats (remember some are reserved for the gate agent to assign for reasons previously stated) had already been assigned. It is your means to get through TSA security, it also means you have a confirmed ticket, just no assigned seat. If this happens to you a lot, try to buy your tickets earlier and go on-line or if done on the phone, ask the agent that sold you the ticket to give you a confirmed seat. As a gold you also lose out on the gate lottery until you get a confirmed seat.

As soon as my travel agent confirms to me that the ticket has been bought, I get on -line and assign myself as good a seats as I can find. However I rairly buy my tickets less than 1 to 2 weeks before the actual flight.

CJKatl

My MO is to always book the last flight out from whatever city I'm in and to try SDC if I can fly out before that. I probably SDC on 75%+ of my flights, and almost always get the seat. (I'd rather do that than have to rush with a customer to get a flight.)

I'd say about half the time I get the "Seat Request" card instead of the actual boarding pass. As soon as I get to the gate, I go to the counter, hand them the Seat Request card, and get a seat. (You would get the seat anyway, but this quietly points out I'm PM and gets me out of a middle seat. When I just wait, I get middle seats.)

I still get upgrades sometimes. And, as the poster above pointed out, there are rows of seats that cannot be assigned until the gate takes control of the flight. (Usually Row 10 is one of them.) "Seat Request" always turns into an actual seat on the plane.

When I call trying to do the SDC, if there are no seats, they will not do the SDC. I'll usually still go to the airport and do SB. When that happens, the card clearly says "Stand-By" and I'd say I get seats about half the time.

Seminole_Kev

Well I guess the "Seat Request" is kind of my fault then as I misunderstood what the kiosk was offering at the time.

When I checked in, it had the option to select an earlier flight, which is great. It presented 3 choices, two of which were standby but the other one (the one I selected) said something else (though I don't remember it being "seat request"). Whatever it was looked like a valid seat on a plane. However after selecting it, it wouldn't let me choose a seat and spat out the seat request tickets.

I guess my concern is I could have potentially given up my confirmed (but later flight) seats for the earlier flight.........but might have not had an actual seat on the plane. Unless it still keeps your seat on the later flight?

Not sure how this works and really, that still leaves me with a couple of questions:

1) If the flight is over sold, they shouldn't be adding additional butts to that flight. I'm assuming that this isn't really the case and I misunderstood the comments further above?

2) Why can't a Crown Room agent (or other means for that matter) assign seats on a seat request ticket? What is it that makes it so that only the gate agent can do it........and what makes it a last minute type of thing?

3) Can anybody confirm what the Kiosks say when offering a seat request ticket? It may be that it does just say "seat request", but for some reason I thought it said something different than that. Maybe just next to the standby offerings, it just sounded more like a "real seat".

4) Sounds like they can offer more "seat request" tickets than seats.......so how does that differ than Standby?

I hope the above questions don't sound like I'm trying to be a pain or am upset as I'm not.......just trying to learn more about this particular item.

Marylou

The answers to #1 & #2 are what FrontRow said; a certain number of seats are held back for gate assignment. The flight may or may not be oversold, just not oversold by whatever margin is deemed safe for that particular flight.

Marylou

The answers to #1 & #2 are what FrontRow said; a certain number of seats are held back for gate assignment. The flight may or may not be oversold, just not oversold by whatever margin is deemed safe for that particular flight.

Edited to add:

I missed the standby part of your question.

If you are offered 3 flights, one standby and 2 "seat request" as you say, the standby flight would mean just that. You would not have a confirmed ticket on that flight; you would standby for no shows to reduce that margin down to 0.

The "seat request" flights would give you a confirmed ticket on that flight, just not a confirmed seat. Either the flight is:

A. Oversold but not by whatever the margin is. Or

B. Not oversold, but 95% of the seats have been assigned and they are holding back that last 5% for gate assignment to elites who have misconnected on other flights or special needs passengers or celebrities like Star Jones or Mrs. Rev. Osteen. (Just trying to see if you were paying attention )

Not sure about that 95/5% thing but it's somewhere around that. Obviously if you want to get home, you would select the "seat request" flight over the standby. You would just need to get to the gate soonest to get the gate agent to assign your seat. Since you are GM, you would be near the top of the pecking order for IDB.

curl

we had seats on our flight... requested at booking. then, they went away and we were unable to select new seats on DL.com.

so SRC means crappy seats, huh? ugh. there were lots of open seats when we booked so i'm confused.

KeaauFlyer

Did you have one or more schedule changes? There is somewhat of a history on DL of seat assignments being dropped after schedule changes, especially if there was more than one. Whenever I get schedule changes, I always check my seat assignment, that is if I don't end up cancelling the whole thing.

curl

No, no changes have been made to the reservation since we booked it. Called and said we just have to deal with it at the airport.

DlRes

No schedule change does not mean no equipment change....perhaps the aircraft changed and the row yo had no longer exits.....or it could also be a FAM