I am flying to LIS, connecting with a long-haul flight, neither of which appears to be particularly busy. Because it's long-haul, and because I want to lounge hop at LHR, I intend to arrive at the airport at least three hours before check-in for the first flight. Have check-in staff been known to give *G members nice seats without charging (which I imagine would be a faff that they don't particularly need at the counter)?

Just a heads up that not appearing 'to be particularly busy' is difficult to determine given that the vast majority of tickets don't allow free advance seat selection. Your plane could look to be 20% full based on the seat map and quickly go to 90%+ full by the time you get to check-in.

Very true! But I'm basing my assumption on full availability all the way down to U class less than one week before travel.

So this T-3 silliness continues? I want to make sure I understand the process. Leaving the USA, I plan to go to online check-in at T-24, select "the best" coach seats, go to the payment screen and just exit. Then at T-3, I go back to online check-in, switch out of "the best" seats to standard "free" coach seats, and check-in. I then go back to online check in, take my "best" seats back, and check-in again? Can I just go to the TAP counter to actually print these boarding passes (at T-3 I won't have access to a printer).

That sure is a lot of rigmarole for a Star Gold to get a halfway decent coach seat. :)

For my most recent 2 flights on TAP (one 3 days ago and one last night), the T-3 trick is no longer working. My previous flight from LHR>LIS didn't work last week, but I was able to go to the *G counter and get a BP without any trouble; however, when I tried to print from the machine, it tried to charge me for the seat.

Interestingly, my flight last night from CGN>LIS, I was able to check in online T-2 and the trick worked. Strange - will keep an eye on my trip next week also to see if this has now become the T-2 instead of T-3 trick...

I took TAP from SFO to Lisbon two weeks ago and the T-3 trick didn't work either. I was assigned a seat at T-24 (i'm ok with that seat). At T-3, I logged back in and I saw all the seats were free of charge. I did select another seat and clicked confirm. Website was not really working properly (so much glitch when I made change), I got a feeling it actually didn't get updated successfully. When I got to airport, my seat number in their system was the one they assigned me at T-24. Anyway, I was able to get a better seat at the counter.

I'd suggest to arrive at airport earlier to get a better seat if the flight is not full and you don't want to pay extra $

So much drama, just for a seat assignment. :) So at T-24, do nothing (except perhaps peak at your seat assignment) and then show up at the airport early to get a better one? Fortunately, due to my schedule that day, I was planning on being at the airport early anyway.

I will say that as a Star Gold this is, um, nuts.

No...I did online check-in at T-24 with a seat assigned to me (just an old habit :D ). Then I got to airport earlier and asked for seat change. I don't want to pay extra $ so it's more like a gamble haha..

Agreed.

For my flight last week, I was assigned totally random seats (window seat at the back for the short-haul into LIS, a middle seat (F) in a middle section on the long-haul, even though the aisle seat next to me (G) was unoccupied).

I asked when checking in at LHR, and the agent was happy to change my seats (got an aisle in the front of economy for the short-haul, then another aisle (D) in an otherwise empty four-seat section half-way back the plane for the long-haul that I myself suggested based on Expertflyer's seat map).

When I arrived at LIS, the random seat generator had assigned somebody else the F seat in my row. So I resigned myself to having to share a row, an requested a D seat further to the front, were G was already assigned. Again, the lounge agent did not hesitate to assist and nothing was said about money. Interestingly, the agent-assigned seats resulted in a block of the seat next to me.

As it turned out, the lady seated in G found herself a private section in the back, so I had a four-seater row to myself. So comfort-wise, it was a great flight. Having said that though, given that it was a day flight, if I'd known that the Políicia Federal would only assign one immigration agent to the line for foreign visitors at NAT, I would have requested a seat by the front of the cabin, even in a shared row (this was followed by an equally long wait for customs, as the Receita Federal X-rayed every bag, using a single scanner).

But for my return, I'm in two minds about paying for a seat. I have no burning desire to arrive early into the lounge-less NAT, and I don't know how likely the contractors will be give any favours to *G members. Any strategy of picking a seat in a middle section further back is clearly bedevilled by the system slotting in people completely at random and at random times. Is it still possible to go online and pay for a seat after you've been assigned a random one after automated check-in?

The other day I was assigned seats automatically and at the boarding gate I've got an error and a new seat. When I asked why I was told because of the trim of the aircraft (E-Jet).
So it seems the automated seating might be totally random. I thought at least they would somehow implement a feature that the automated seating and the trim was ok.

So much drama at the airport with this seat assignment nonsense. At t minus 3, I went online to improve my seats. My wife and I were originally assigned to essentially the worst seats on the aircraft, despite our Star gold status. At t- 3, all seats were still showing a fee, but I selected seats anyway to see what would happen at the payment page. It wanted to charge me $144. It would not let me go back, so I exited, and when I started the check in process again in, the $144 fee was stuck on the rez with no way to remove it. I waited to t minus two, and then all the remaining seats showed free.I changed my seat assignments to available seats to remove
the fee, checked into those, restarted the check-in process, and grabbed my previous seats that they wanted to charge me for. Nuts.

Can anyone confirm if this is all still working? I'm flying from Brazil to Europe in December and I can already log in and check my assigned seats. They are showing that they have split me up from my wife and daughter. I don't know if these seats are likely to change when online check in opens? Obviously I would like for us to sit together but without having to pay the ridiculously high fee!

For my flight I ended up just paying for seats. Before T-24 I counted 21 desirable pairs of seats, by T-23 is was down to 2.

The seats I had preemptively chosen, but not yet paid for were still available, but no was was I going to risk losing them on a 12 hour long haul flight.

I used expert flyer to see availability.

My experience flying with them recently and trying to follow the advice on this thread was :

- You can definitely reserve seats at check-in and leave the process without paying
- You cannot get a boarding pass with those seats by yourself (it says "needs special handling" so you need to see an agent)
- If you are lucky (I was at JFK, where the staff are contracted and not employed by TAP, so they don't care as much or know the rules), they will check you in and print the boarding pass
with the seat you selected without even mentionning payment

But, most importantly:
- Their automatic seat assignment system seems to like to fill up the middle of the plane first (and I mean the two middle seats [E/F] of the 4 middle seats on their A330)... so maybe don't check in at the exact online check-in opening time?
- Seats on some flights seem to "open up" 2 hours before departure, but you cannot change your check-in after one hour before the departure, so that leaves you a one hour window to make changes.
- On the plus side, you can get an exit row or extra legroom seats easily that way without any payment.
- On the minus side, if you happen to have a connecting flight before your transatlantic flight, you may very well be in the air flying during the one hour window (as I was), so unable to change your seat...

- At portugese airports, TAP staff knows exactly what you are trying to do when you try to avoid payment, and they *will* remove your selected seats and put you back on your original seats, asking you
to change your check-in during the 2 hour to 1 hour window before departure.