No Advanced Seat Assignment for Award Tickets?
 

Booked 4 award tickets via AA for my family of four (all on one account, under a single reservation, mind you), traveling Qsuites from PHL - DOH and then standard Qatar Business DOH - EBB. Naturally, been planning this trip for a long time, and specifically planned for and chose this flight for the quad set-up that will be most helpful for my family; besides my wife, I'll be traveling with a 2-year-old and 6-year-old. After booking, I called Qatar Airways and was informed that, because this is an award ticket, seat assignments cannot be made until we arrive at the airport the day of departure. Jaw drop. So I asked the agent, "You're saying my two-year-old son could be made to sit by himself on a longhaul international flight in business class?" To which the phone agent unflinchingly replied, "Yes. Is there anything else I can help you with?"

In all the reading on Qsuites I've done, I've never seen mentioned anything about this massive restriction. Is this common knowledge, and is there any solution other than to just roll the dice with my family's sanity on a very long international trip?

HUACA - hang up and call again

You should have said yes you can help me by transferring me to your manager. What an ill-informed agent.

Made many award bookings both through BA and directly with QR for Qsuites and have managed to select seats without an issue straight after.

When I’ve booked Q suites through AA for 2 people, I’ve found it was better to just get the QR PNR and call them for seat selection. Never had issues.

witthuus, a very valid suggestion. I was going to HUCA but I had publicly tweeted Qatar airways about this and they responded saying to DM them the flight details to see if they could assign seats.

And I can't believe I forgot this on the phone with the agent, but I did this without a problem just a few months ago. I booked a roundtrip Qsuites flight, scheduled for last month (cancelled for COVID-19 of course), and had called and, over the phone, selected my seats for that flight immediately after bookingwithout any problems! On the exact same route and also with AA miles. I was so flustered by the agent yesterday I just blanked, and we went around for several minutes as I explained the ridiculousness of what he was saying. He also outright refused to let me speak to a supervisor, so that was fun.

Good idea with the QR PNR, Basanez, I think that's what I used last time actually when I selected my seats.

I had the same issue with OP. Made an award reservation for Q-suites through JL for two. This is not my first time, I have been able to get seats assigned in the quad previously by calling the local Japan office. Now that it seems to be closed, I called the central Qatar no, and my jaw dropped by how unhelpful/ unknowledgeable the staff is. Sigh, QR service onboard is great, one of the best, but the ground service just sucks so bad.

Wanted to follow up: Twitter QatarAirways team took care of it! After DM’ing our booking information and preferred seats, they assigned them and issued electronic tickets with seat assignments to my email. Quad setup in qsuites first row, then 2nd row 4 across for the 6 hour DOH to EBB (requested 1st row if possible, as it was empty, but understand it’s likely reserved for elite status and all that). I’m thrilled—though disturbed still by the horrible treatment by their phone agent.

Q suites are Russian roulette. Don't be disappointed if they switch to non Qsuites.

I would be much more worried that either or both flights won't be operating.
I don't know when is your travel, but currently none operate..

This is what is intollerable with Qatar. The small element of pathetic, half hearted, rule driven ground / contact centre staff; totally disinterested who never ever go the extra mile and have no lateral thinking skills nor seem to be empowered to do so. Considering your situation and the age of your children a reasonable caring airline would have placed you on hold and spoken to a supervisor-that's if they didn't just override the rules and make sure you had a quad allocated considering you are a J class pax with two very young children. This is a prime example of Qatars Achilles heel. The mind boggles how they can, and have, put so much effort and thought into the award winning amazing hard and soft product in the air but fail miserably and are more a 3rd rate carrier on the ground...namely when things go wrong or you have a problem.

After reading this thread, I just sent a message to (@)qrsupport on twitter for getting my AA award booking updated and seats assigned. I will update this as I have more information/

In Qatar Airways dictionnary its called an "Enhancement".....

This is as likely to be a codeshare issue as anything else. I have had revenue tickets on codeshare flights not be able to have seats allocated until check in before (albeit that was on a JAL operated flight).

For another data point, I booked 4 QR flights in J last night, called today, and booked seats no problem. Was talking to the agent for like 3 minutes.

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Did your contact with @QRSupport on twitter get your seats assigned?