Rules for accessing Premium Seats?
 

Does anybody have a link to NW's formal description who is allowed to access the seats in coach marked as "Premium", "Exit" and "Disabled"?

I have just reserved seats for my family's trip from LCA to PDX this summer which is booked in B-class, and much to my surprise I could access those seats even for those family members that are not elite of any kind. In fact even the automatic preassignment had my parents in law (who are on a different reservation than we are and are very infrequent flyers) in these seats - while our party initially had seats in the back of both the D10 and the 757 - with two Flying Blue Elite+ in the reservation plus son and baby.

Tried to seat us in row 22 on the D10 which was no problem, but could not get the exit-row confirmed at least for me while the rest of row 22 would get confirmed. Called NWA in the USA and was offered the row 10 with baby-bassinet instead which I gladly took (those seats showed occupied on "Manage my reservation"), and moved my parents next to us...

So: Why could I not get the Exit row confirmed despite being Skyteam Elite+? But why could my parents reserve seats in the premium section despite not being Elite at all (maybe because of the B-fare)? And why do seats that are obviously open (row 10) show up as occupied when looking at "Manage my reservation"?

Any help would be greatly appreciated! I am mainly concerned that my parents lose their seats close to us sometime between now and the flights in July, and as my parents both hold Disability-certificates from German authorities, I wonder if they also could reserve the Disability-seats (they are not in wheelchairs, however)?

Greetings - Dirk

Exit rows are restricted (in advance) to NW Elites Only or day of departure checkin
 

Exit row seats are restricted to day of departure check-in. I believe NW Elites have access to exit row seats and all "P" seats at time of reservation through day of departure.

Check this link and see if you can move your assigned seat to an exit row, if you can then FB has access, if not then they are restricted to NW elites only:

https://www.nwa.com/cgi-bin/res_info.pro

RC

I am unable to reserve an exit row seat at the time of booking as a NW SE, but I can immediately change into one from Manage my reservations after booking.

Also people on B fares or higher are allowed seats in the P section, and they get a PF on their boarding pass which allows them to preboard with the elites. It is believed this stands for preferred flyer.

Also NW commonly blocks out seats on flights until 24 hours before departure. There are some other threads on why they might do this.

As a CO Gold, I can get NW exit rows (and any P seat) from the manage my reservations page.

dan

In regards to nwa.com, CmdrThor is correct. When you are making the reservation, you cannot select exit rows. Complete the ticketing and immediately go back to Manage My Reservations and you will be able to switch. Also make sure your frequent flier number is entered in the reservation - this could be why you can't select Premium seats. I know for DL reservations with a NW worldperks number I have to call to enter the number. I don't think anyone can select disability seats until checkin online, but you can probably get them if you call.

I also had an issue last week when I tried to change my seat on a CRJ. Manage my Reservations showed everything taken except the disability seats. Reservations showed the plane wide open. I finally realized that the flight was ticketed for the wrong day, and I never caught it. My reservation was for Thursday, but I was trying to "buy" the flight for Wednesday. Not sure if I or the travel agent goofed, but my fault for not double checking when the itinerary was e-mailed.

Try re-entering your ST E+ FF no. at NWA.com I had to do that to access P and E seats.

The seats are supposed to be available only to NW and SkyTeam elite passengers.

But I've often seem them available for selection to non-elites travling on Y/B fares or on rulebuster ("perkpass") award tickets.

FWIW I finally found out what my problem is. I can select the seats, but the system won't confirm them (and revert to my old seat) because we have an infant traveling with us. With that the whole party is restricted from exit-seating, not just the person attending to the baby (I was not aware of that restriction, however can understand the motivation behind this).

As to P-seats, I can select and get confirmed any of these...

Greetings - Dirk

If you call, NW can split your reservation so that the infant and attender are in a separate reservation from any other travelers. That will allow the rest of you (assuming at least one of you is elite) to select exit rows. If the infant's attender isn't elite, however, (s)he will probably have to sit in the white seats.

Thanks for the suggestion, but this won't work in our case. I have one of those Cyprus to Portland paper tickets booked through Expedia and ticketed on CY-stock. NWA claims they can't do anything to these tickets/reservations because of the stock-issue, and Expedia fearing a hefty penalty refuses to do any change at all. Leaves me with CY as an option, but their next office is far away from where I live, so I just forget about that...

What I did is move my parents in law into the exit-seats (could access the seats from their seperate reservation and got the seats confirmed) and will just swap the boarding-passes with them after boarding...as they don't speak any English they cannot have the exit-seats for themselves...;-)!

Greetings - Dirk

I am confused and I think Northwest is too! Tomorrow I am flying to New Orleans with 5 non-elite friends. I tried to help them by telling them to do online checkin today within 24 hours of departure so they could select the still vacant exit row seats and/or some of the many vacant premium seats. I tried walking them thru the process over the phone but it would not work. I called the elite line and they confirmed that yes, within 24 hours of departure, they should be able to select those seats - even for a non-elite.

We tried again and it would not work. I call back, asking to be transferred on the internet support desk due to difficulties with the online checkin process. However, the online support service rep contradicted what the elite line told me. They said that the only seats these non-elite flyers could get during the checkin process are the Choice seats for $15. They told me it's been that way for a long time. :confused:

Is that your understanding?

Yes. Exit rows and $$ seat are open to non-eliets but "P" seats are just for Elite selection.

As a Plat if you call the plat line they *may* seat them next to you. I just did this for a coleague traveling to AMS with me and have done it before but never for 5 people :). Give it a shot anyway.

I have noticed this too, even though I'm logged into my Plat WP account when making the reservation. The seats show as occupied when you're selecting them at the time of purchase. But if you go back in after purchase, they are available.

I've explained this quite a few times on this board, but here goes again.

NWA.com has two entirely separate seat selection systems.

One runs on the res.nwa.com server farm and is the system you see when you initially book a ticket or if you view your seats through MyInfo after booking your ticket online. This system does NOT allow you to select exit rows or handicapped seats no matter what your status is. It does, however, sometimes allow you to select regular (non-P/non-exit) seats on long-haul KL metal flights (or intraeuropean KL metal flights booked in Europe Select class), which you can't do on the other system.

The other system runs on the www.nwa.com server farm and is what you see when you look up your itinerary from the home page or go to Manage My Reservations. This system DOES allow you to select non-$ exit row seats if you are elite or booked in the same PNR as an elite. In the past it allowed elites to select handicapped seats, too (this is usually not the case any more). You cannot view seatmaps for KL metal flights, however.

The OLCI system is based on the www.nwa.com system, but has different rules about who can select which seats when.