I booked a China Eastern international business class ticket on their UK website. Completed the payment and got an Air Ticket Issue Confirmation e-mail with the 13-digit ticket number and 16-digit order number on it. No 6-digit booking code though. The e-mail says to click the link to go to Manage Booking for seat selection. Did that and entered my ticket number and name to see my reseveration, but there is no option for seat selection.

How can I select seats? Thanks

I have to congratulate you on managing to book on their UK website. When I tried it kept taking me to a page that was 100% Chinese! I reluctantly gave up and booked through Booking.com which was slightly cheaper but against my better judgement.

I've since tried to confirm my flights with China Eastern but unable to access anything with them. Their website says that you can only manage bookings for flights booked on the site!

This seems to be the case. I had exactly the same issue as Tim Cowell and ended up booking on an OTA. But at least the OTA allowed me choose seats as part of the payment process.

From what I gather, MU only allows you to access website functions if you buy directly from them. It's crazy. And don;'t bother with the app unless you apeak very good Mandarin.

God knows what online checkin will be like - I presume I will need to do it at the checkin desk.

I have the same problem. I booked through seat24.de and got a 6-digit booking code and also a e-ticket number (781...). I can choose a seat at seat24.de, but they charge additional money for this "service" ( ~20$). I cannot find my booking with either the 6-digit booking code nor the e-ticket number at the China Eastern website. I get the message "data extraction failed" when entering my data and searching for the booking.

Wow, this works for me:

Enter your eticket number and add MR or MRS to the end of your first name at the mentioned website = works.

Cool, that it still works after all these years. Obviously, MU system hasn't changed at all.

I'm following on this with a somewhat similar issue as OPs -
Booked MU tickets through their website, received confirmation e-mail with Order No and 781-stock tickets number.
Managed to get to the Seat Reservation Section of their website, logged in with TicketNo and Pax name, got to the Seat Reservation page but when i click on the Seat Reservation link, i get this popup:
"Seat reservation is unavailable for this flight segment. For specific reasons, please refer to China Eastern Airlines Booking Notice on Passengers for Seat Selection below. Online seat reservations are not available for international routes. Please go to the airport check-in counter for this service. Thank you for your understanding."

Flights are domestic (PEK-SHA-PEK).

Any advice?

Thanks!

Just check in at the airports (fast and easy for PEK-SHA and vv).

Thanks!
After a full day of fumbling through their websites and barely-usable mobile app, i gave up and will check in at the airport

I just noticed this thread I started has been added to. So I should update what I did for this trip back in October 2023.

As I have Flying Blue Platinum status, I called the FB Platinum Service Line even though Flying Blue had nothing to do flight this ticket. The agent could not select seats as the Flying Blue system is different to the MU system. However, he went to so far as to contact other offices and managed to get an English speaking MU person on the phone who booked my seats - I don't know how he did this or if this will work for everyone but that's what happened to me. BTW, the MU London phone number is a waste of time and effort, even the FB agent had no luck with that one.

Adding some anecdotes. I was able to book a ticket through Flying Blue awards and the agent was able to assign seats. You can see a live seatmap through eDreams (OTA) without payment.

I was able to select a seat using the MU appli for a recent domestic mainland flight I bought directly from MU.

Booked my MU flights through an OTA and was able to select my seats on the MU website. Very pleased about that!

You can select seats on the MU website when you buy through an OTA, but doing anything on the MU website is a painful experience

And unless you�re fluent in Mandarin, don�t even waste your time downloading the app.