Swapping the same seat between two reservations
 

Here's the story:

I hold the last D seat on CX261 (HKG-CDG) - this reservation is being rated by AA, but I don't think they will make the purchase deadline so I'm looking to book with CX instead.

Given that this is the last seat, how do I make an alternative booking with CX, without having the seat released for general sale or to the waitlist, i.e. so that I don't lose it? Any work-arounds for this situation?

Cheers for your help guys, this forum is a goldmine of airline wisdom.

There is no way to "swap" it from AA to CX, I've tried for a decade and all the methods result in the seat being released and it is a race to get it again. Why don't you think AA will make the purchase deadline? They always do as AA has a rather sophisticated work queue management system.

The only way you can hold another reservation of the same flight is if its booked with a different flight number, ie codeshare. But since CDG-HKG is not a AA code-share with CX, that cannot be done.

If you need to book with CX, then you must cancel the AA held reservation first otherwise you risk both reservations being cancelled. Once the AA held booking is cancelled, that seat goes back to general inventory to which you may then book with CX.

If there have been other people who booked any J, C, D, I, or U seat on the same FLT, OP might not be able to get the D seat back.