I thought about this a bit more and shouldn't such a self-service feature justify the laying off of phone agents? I, by all means, appreciate this new feature, but am still weary of cost cutting measures that would do away with a friendly voice that I could talk to anytime of the day re: my itineraries.

aloha

You are probably correct....

However, these things don't always work as planned. The new electronic check-in at my local airport, for example, was surely designed to reduce the needed number of gate agents. However, the things were so confusing, there were far more gate agents than usual helping people figure them out!

I agree that while half the time you have to call the Elite line to get anything done (the World Perks reservation system, for example, can't split a reservation into Y OW and C OW, also often won't give you standard seats when there really are standard seats available), this new tool will save a few calls for me.
Not only can I choose Exit row seats now, but they also have suddenly opened up several "blocked" rows of seats for the flights I have upcoming. For several weeks, a MSP-PHX flight I have next month had something like 6 P seats available, nothing else. I was smelling a TCV!
But now with this new "View/Change Reservations" mode, they have opened up 2 full rows of P seats that had been "occupied" before. Interesting.

Not only was I able to get better seats for my return flight, but I found out I'd been upgraded early for my flight on Saturday! It seems like they copied the seatguru maps for the first class cabin Premium seats.

I actually stumbled upon this last night, thanks for the post though.

Very nice additions indeed. I was able to change my FC seat to 1A before check-in and it's still there (even though I haven't checked in yet for my flight this morning).

-RM

I tried looking at a reservation that I have in Nov and get the following message:
Customer Advisory: We are unable to process your request. No changes have been made to your reservation. For assistance, please contact Northwest at 1-800-225-2525.

Maybe the problem is that only the outbound flights have seats assigned -- haven't reached the 89 day window for the return yet. I did call the elite desk and get an exit row seat for the domestic and an aisle on row 11 center for the DC10, where there are no favorite seats.
tom

Luv this new option, but who beat me to A333 - seat 10B for my trip to London???

My comments on the sometimes strange "Premium Seating" designations using this new seat assignment function:

- Using the older seating function, you probably noticed that certain seats or rows were consistently indicated as "occupied" even at the creation of a seat map (ie, 90 days out):

• In Y, the last row in the cabin(s) and the row immediately in front of an exit row
• In F, the bulkhead row

- Those seats were not actually "occupied", but were in actuality simply "blocked" from general seat assignment by NW. The reason for this is:

• For the Y rows, these rows have limited recline (due to either FAA safety mandate or a physical wall behind them), as well as standard Y pitch; thus someone who sits here is sitting in the worst possible seats and will likely be very unhappy.
• For the F rows, most (but not all) people do not like the bulkhead row (don't like the effect of "being forced to sit in a corner", ie, having a blank wall right in your face, usually tighter legroom, no underseat storage available for laptop case, briefcase, etc). TSA security recommendations also play into holding back on general access of this first row (eg, federal air marshal seats).

- NW "blocks" these "less desirable" seats to hold them back until load factor warrants release of the seats -- if the final load factor is lower than perhaps 90 % no customer would be forced to sit in these locations. (Its always been possible for anyone to call reservations in advance and actually change into one of these seats if you really, really wanted to sit there, so this is a "soft blocking" of seats. Of course, as the load factor nears 100 %, late assignments will be made involuntarily into these seats).


- The new seating function is designating as "premium seats" the following:

• elite seats (which can be reserved only be elites or full-fare)
• all the seats which the "old seating system" had shown as "blocked", decribed above

A more accurate label for that second category above, instead of "premium", would be "seats you probably would rather not sit in and which NW used to block". I expect the designation will be corrected (ie "premium" no longer displayed) in the next software update to the new seat assignment function.

There's a good answer in this thread:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showt...3&page=2&pp=15