arjen05

Hi,

I've started flying KL more frequently since September (35+ flights). One of the FB Gold perks is free (economy standard) seat selection. Since a couple of weeks I've started selecting standard seats. However.. in more than 70% of my recent flights, my selected seat changed between check-in and boarding.

It happened regularly that at the gate, when scanning the boarding pass, a red light started flashing with the note 'seating error' and staff manually had to write a new seat on my BP. See the below example: BP printed an hour before, seat changed at the gate, separating me from my colleague travelling in the same PNR.



In other cases -quite often- I receive push messages in the KLM app, informing me about a seat change because of an aircraft change, just before departure. I truly want to believe this message, even though it seems strange since (as you can see at the carrier name in the screenshot) I was in Germany (FRA), where there is not much choice in planes, because they fly in from AMS.



As mentioned, the above happens in 70% of my flights. This undermines one of my (limited) Gold perks. When I entered a plane recently and found someone else on the seat that was printed on my BP and a flight attendant showed at her iPad that in her system I was at another seat, she was heavily surprised that this happens to me once a week. She advised me to contact KLM and so I did.

So I've sent 5 screenshots from different flights within 2 weeks to KLM and they got back to me: all normal, sir.

Do any of you have similar cases and do you think this is indeed normal?

Thanks!

Arjen

Mirk

That's interesting. Seems like they are "upgrading" elites in Comfort seats when the plane gets quite full rather than giving them away to lambda late check-in pax.

While the initiative seems to have some good intentions, I don't really like the way they do it. They should just waive the fees for Gold and Silver depending of the amount of people which needs to take those Comfort seat for everyone to fit in the plane imao.

arjen05

Not sure if it has to do with upgrading.. in most cases I have been reseated towards the back of the airplane.. (and separated from my colleagues in the same booking)

KLflyerRalph

Typical KLM

Mirk

Did you submitted an official complaint? Asking KLM on social networks is useless for these situations.

caliform

I would complain here as well. At your status level you are entitled to good seats and at the very least a consistent seat with your choice. Explain your dissatisfaction and escalate if need be.

wuzziduzziman

Can't really confirm this. Both my wife and me are on KLM flights on a regular basis and we never experienced anything like that.
I'd be quite bothered actually.

caliform

Likewise. I fly KLM a ton (FB Platinum with KLM flights alone) and can't say this has ever happened to me.

arjen05

Yep, after complaining at the airport, at cabin crew and at via telephone,
I finally submitted the complaint form at the website. Two days later they called me with a cold reaction, they didn't really see the issue, nor was there anything strange according to KLM.

Agree with both of you @caliform and @wuzziduzziman.

Have made 1 flight YTD on AF, no seat selection was available. Tomorrow 2 KLM flights scheduled, so let's see what's happening.

arjen05

Ah, I'm glad that KLM didn't have me waiting until tomorrow to change my seat. They've done it today already!

johan rebel

What aircraft change?

KL1768 tomorrow was, is and remains an F70.

Johan

Mirk

I get this alert regularly while there was no aircraft change neither as any change of my seat. It seems to be a bug of the app I reported a while back but still not fixed obviously.

Mcflyneo

I think a bug as well. I get the a/c change messages regularly(4 for my last outbound klm flight) but neither a/c nor seat ever change.

tezzer

Ahh, interesting. I had this no less than 3 times on a recent return from PRG-AMS-HUY.

Seems it was a system glitch, but having been "moved" 3 times before the 1st flight, I paid 99EUR and upgraded myself to 1A EuroBusiness, to take out the uncertainty !

johan rebel

Just OLCI'd, and changed my seat while I was at it, from the pre-assigned window to an aisle seat in the row in front. I then got the following message on the screen:

"Your seat has changed. Due to an aircraft change, you have been assigned a new seat. If this is a different type of seat than the one you selected, we will automatically refund the extra costs you made. If you have not heard from us within 24 hours, you can submit a refund request via KLM.com. We are sorry for the inconvenience."

Flightstats shows no aircraft change, of course.

Johan