Preferred seating
 

When should I expect to be know if my prefered seating request is being authorised?

Funny enough, within 30 seconds of posting my previous post, I had a call from ELAL regarding preferred seating for a flight tomorrow.

They told me that from one day before the flight they can process the request.

This is weird, a while ago they communicated that even non-status customers can now reserve these seats long before the fligt.

It isn't so.
I requested it months ago and was only contacted today.
I requested that they process it for my return flight, and they declined as it can only be done a day prior to departure.

On the whole I think it's only fair that they hold these seats for status holding passengers untill a day before departure.

*shrug* as status pax we probably thing it's more fair :)

Perhaps these issues have to do with EL AL trying to sell the preferred seats and only release them to status holders a day or so before the flight if those seats go unsold?

I think the issue may relate to the fact that several airlines, including EL AL, have gone the way of trying to sell perks like status seats that were previously reserved for status holders to the general public in order to add revenue. This is an industry trend and the likely scenario will be that status holders across many airlines, such as ourselves, will experience a significant reduction in benefits as those benefits are used by airlines to generate revenue.

Below is a link to an interesting article about upgrade auctions which is a collateral issue to the points I made above. http://blogs.wsj.com/middleseat/2013...ines-are-sold/

It seems the opposite, that ELAL wait untill a day before departure to let status pax choose these seats, and only then do they sell it non status passengers.

As a GL I can chose a preferred seat when I book the flight.
Bassinet seats get released one week before the flight.