What about, instead of checking in at the 24 hour window (23:59 rather), why not try to update your reservation and select new seats. Those seats might be available to you then and you can still play around a few times before ACTUALLY checking in.

how do i update the reservation?

no help when i called them. just called them

if i don't sit next to my parents, i'll try to switch with someone. or, if my mom does not sit next to my dad, my mom will throw a s^%t fit. If any NWA person is reading this, ALLOCATE MORE SEATS FOR THE AVERAGE JOE ON ALL YOUR FLIGHTS!

When did you buy your tickets? It sounds like this is a rather full flight and you either a) bought your tickets too late and there weren't any non-exit/premium seats available to select, or b) you bought your tickets a while ago but never bothered to pick seats then or anytime since.

In both scenarios, the onus kind of falls on you. If you want to be seated together, buy the tickets early enough so that there are still seats available. Otherwise, if they were bought months in advance, make sure you select seats at the time of purchase.

Best of luck getting the seats you want, but it may be slim pickins from here on out.

they were bought few months ago. I hope they would not do that to someone who has enough miles for a free roundtrip ticket on NWA or any of their partner airlines. Both my father and I have enough miles for 3 free roundtrip tickets. If NW decides to bump us to First Class, that would be fine by me. But, if they decide to bump us completley from the flight, i'll put up one HECK of a fight and i mean it. If they don't want my business, i'll take it to the other airlines. I've seen cargo treated better.

Seating has always been assigned first come, first served. You should have selected your seats online when you bought the tickets, or 90-days out from departure, whichever was most recent. Because you didn't, you find yourself in the situation you are in now.

Check-in for your flight early and be at the airport early. Typically they'll bump the people who check-in last if the flight is oversold and they can't find volunteers. But I think the chances of that happening to you are slim.

Go to www.nwa.com and from the menu choose Reservations Center -> Manage my reservations -> View/Change my reservations. You can change your seats there.

schmutzig, my father tried to get seats at the purchase time. Florin, i tried that, won't work. So i guess i have to try on wednesday.

Then the flight was full when your father purchased the tickets and you need to purchase them even earlier (even if it was a few months ago).

There's no conspiracy going on here. All the seats had apparently been assigned when you purchased your tickets, so you're left with checking the seat maps on a regular basis to see if something has opened up, or waiting until the day of check-in and trying to snag something good there. It's really pretty simple.

If you absolutely need seats together, call NW or go on nwa.com and try and reschedule to flights that are less occupied. Of course, if you do this, you will have to pay any fare difference (it could actually be cheaper today so you might get a refund) as well as any applicable change fees per the fare rules.