alanw

Hey everyone, I just bought a premium economy ticket on AA flying BCN-ORD and back. Aircraft is a 788. I just went to "My Trips" to choose my seats, and there, right next to the words "Premium Economy" under "Class", is the link to "Choose Seats". Which loads a seat map for the main cabin and suggests I might enjoy row 20. According to Seat Guru and ExpertFlyer, PE should be rows 6-9 in a 2-3-2 config.

Anyone know what might be going on here? Thanks.

JJeffrey

The PE cabin is rows 6-9, if you're in PE then it should be no problem to select seats there. Where did you book it, have you checked the fare basis / booking code / email receipt to make doubly sure that it was in fact booked in PE?

ChurnieEls

You sure you bought a premium economy ticket and not an MCE ticket?

Either way, quickest way to solve this is to get on the phone to them.

If you did buy a PE ticket and they do indeed sit you back in coach (even MCE) then you're entitled to 75% of the price of the ticket back as the flight originates in the EU and is subject to their regulations.

alanw

Yeah, pretty sure I bought PE, from iberia.com - Here's the confirmation mail:


And here's the page on aa.com:

I'm guessing I should call AA in this case?

wrp96

Absolutely!

Antarius

yup.

ajeleonard

Got to love the accuracy of an airline's own website that lists a "787-800"

enviroian

It's technically a 788 or 789 right?

OP if don't want to wait until Q4 for a call back I would suggest sending a PM via twitter where they can help you usually within 10 minutes. I use them frequently.

aztimm

According to Boeing, it is a 787-8 Dreamliner, 787-9 Dreamliner, or 787-10 Dreamliner.


To the OP, yes, if you have purchased Premium Economy and you're not able to select that, then yes call. Or you can send AA a DM on Twitter, if it isn't urgent.

Antarius

Yup. Full names are 787-8 and 787-9

PHL

Not sure why Boeing dropped the 00 on the new model/variants, including the 747 that went right from -400 to -8. Same with the Max 7/8/9/10. Someone in marketing thought it would be a great idea I guess.

I'm guessing the 787-8 shows up on aa.com as a 787-800 due to coding. Funny thing is it's probably not a terribly difficult fix to update the table that has the short codes with full descriptions, which would reflect accordingly on reservations and flight detail lookups. But I may be understating just how complex the GDS really is for what one would assume is an 'easy' fix. While they're at it, why not remove "Industries" from the Airbus description?

zdcatc12

I believe that they did that when they dropped the customer codes for who ordered the plane, e.g. AA was always 23, so these would have been 787-823 and 787-923 if they had kept doing that.

Antarius

Yup - customer codes are largely useless now as the aircraft are standard. Back in day of the 720s, and 707s Boeing did some seriously wild customizations for customers - pretty sure the fuselage length was different between the regular, QF and Pan Am orders. Once they dropped it, it went across the board to all types.
Both Airbus and Boeing also bought heavily into this 8 for China thing with Airbus skipping the a350 - 370 (a350 at the time) to land up with the a380-800 and Boeing going with the 787-8. The 747-8 supposedly used the 8 to indicate that it was of the 787 generation in terms of technology.

On a side note, my personal favorite way of numbering is the Airbus narrowbody series. a318-a321. Wish they had kept it for other models with the base a3x0 and the shrink being a3x0 - n and the stretches as a3x0 + n -a349, a350, a351 etc.

thatmikereed

What happens if you pick a PE seat in 6-9? Should allow you to and show $0 charge.

PHL

When you are ticketed for one class of service, you cannot see seats in other classes. In the case of an intl. trip with PE sold as a separate cabin I believe it won't show up. Because the OP is only seeing selections in main cabin, it def sounds like an IT glitch that should be resolved with a phone call or twitter DM.