Has anyone else noticed that domestic seat allocations seem to have gone to pot of late? Have had 'forward aisle' in my profile since Jesus was a lad. Always used to end up in the first few rows of Y.

Over the last 2 weeks, I have not had anything allocated in the front half of the plane.

Queried it in the QC today and the QF staffer reckoned that QF staff used to manually edit the auto-generated seating allocations to move FF's with status to their preferred seats. She said this has now been stopped and had not been well received by the staff who spend all day facing flyers with status.......

Have already shifted all my intl 'J' to VS and 'F" to SQ after last years changes. If domestic seating is going to be pot luck, am struggling to convince myself that DJ should not be used more.

I hear what you are saying but you won't get preferred seating on DJ either. I find it hard to believe that this was a manual process in the past though.

I agree something is up. Had a few experiences recently where I see people with no status seated in front of me, once on a 738 from CNS -BNE and the plane was almost empty. Another experience where a fellow PS was seated 10 rows ahead of me in a 763.

Just booked SYD-ADL on QF81 (2 seats, same booking). Both Mrs og and I have aisle seat requests and we were allocated just that - two seats with an aisle between us (B&D). Easy to change to an AB seat but an interesting situation.

Maybe Qantas has recently changed their seating allocation system/software with the result that a flier's status is not being taken into account as much as it used to be. As a temporary fix staffers began manually edited these seating allocations to move PAX with status in line with their preferences and this has now been stopped as it was inefficient.

All purely conjecture of course ...

Slight difference to the OP issue as it's an international flight. Strange, nonetheless.

Why cant pax choose a seat on line as one can with BA?
This is a great advantage.

For frequent flyers, they really don't want to have to do this everytime they make a booking or their TA does. The old system was good, you recorded your preference in your profile and you were set.

My preference is listed as Forward Ailse. I always get an aisle, but rarely forward...

My preference of forward isle is working for me (QF Plat). Just got off a flight into BNE in 4D:- first row behind bus class with plenty of leg room (in BNE Q club now)

I'm a lowly NB, booked an award flight SYD-AKL-SYD and was allocated 28B and 29K for SYD-AKL, and 29A&B on the way back. very odd.

I'm guessing its a single person in 28A.. in which case, why can't they go in 29K, they're both window seats.

Hopefully they'll be able to fix it at check-in

Always allocated an aisle seat, in accordance with my preference for forward aisle.

This seemed to have started about a month ago. I likewise get an aisle but back in the 30s whereas I had been in row 23 or 24 week after week for months. One of the reasons I fly Qantas is to avoid sitting next to someone who flies once a year loaded up with five cartons of crispy cream donuts, but this is happening on a regular basis now.

Aus_MD

Is it due to the much higher prevalence of QuickCheck use, and the subsequent shifting of seat allocations by Mr Joe Fly-Once-A-Year?

I doubt it, AFAIK, the "Mr Joe"s can't normally take a seat that has has been pre-allocated.