TK starting to charge for Seating in International Flights ( 2021 & onwards )
 

Dear folks,

Starting from 1 January 2021, Turkish Airlines would charge for advance seating on international flights as well. Passengers who hold Elite and Elite Plus status, Turkish Corporate Club members, and sailors would be still able to select standard (non-extra-legroom ) for free; however, all other passengers including non-TK Star Alliance Gold members would now need to pay for advance seat selection. Obviously, this only applies for Economy Class and Business Class seat selection remains unaffected.

Paid seat selection would end at 26 hours before departure and at that stage, seating would become free-of-charge. However, exit row seats would not be able to be chosen online at a time less than 26 hours before the flight.

On domestic-international and international-domestic connections, for the domestic leg, the free seat selection is also suspended, and similar to solely domestic tickets, seats would be auto-assigned by the system or be available for purchase at online check-in.

Also, a reminder that during voluntary cancellations and changes, the seat fee that you paid would not be refunded.
If you upgrade your flight to Business Class and already have paid for a seat, your seat fee would be refunded to your original payment method.

Seat charges for regular rows would differ between $9 and $39 and they would be available for purchase 355 days before the flight.

Some example seat charges are like the following:
IST - LAX : ₺306.60 ( $39 )
IST - FCO: ₺110.06 ( $14 )
IST - LHR: ₺117.93 ( $15 )

For more details, you could consult this link: https://www.turkishairlines.com/en-t...nd-conditions/
Also a special thanks to max_kolesne for alerting me about this new change.

Sailors :confused: What's that all about ?? Any special arrangements for farmers?



Given that Qatar recently joined the BA approach to paid business-class seat reservations; the state of affairs you cite is no longer obvious :D




Depressing, isn't it. Makes you feel some gratitude to BA for allowing its elites unfettered access to all seating from the time of booking.

I guess they are copying the idea of Qatar Airways. QR has recently rebranded the old Al Maha Lounge in DOH for mariners and seaman.

AFAIK, Qatar is not asking for money like BA; they have the Emirates approach where discounted business class passengers choose their seats at check-in.

TK should at least offer free exit row seating for their own elites, maybe from 72h or 96h before the flight until departure. The worst part is that you either pay, or it's first come first served disregarding status, and any other factors. I admire BA as they have a fair system.

i guess they have contracts with shipping lines for the positioning of crew - and the provision of lounges and/or seat selection is a sweetner


I understood QR intends to charge certain categories of business-class passenger for seat selection, just as BA does.



They should offer free seating for their own elites. Full stop !

Just wondering, does anybody know another airline that charges exit-row seats for their own top-tier elites?
Personally, I don't recall any airline other than Turkish Airlines.

Aegean!

Asiana too.

I went to book seats today for our LGW-TAS flights later this month. Outbound were free, but TK asking for $15 for each seat/segment for the return early next month. They wont be getting that! But I do hope we do not end up a separated family of 3. LCC's and even BA have taken flack for that. At least on BA, families do get some priority and are usually in our experience together.

If you dont want to be separated why not ensure this by paying $15 per seat? :confused:

As far as I am concerned, I have paid for the tickets in full. I don't think it is right to be charged again. I know this is an old argument that has been made with other airlines too. It is just sad to have another reason for being loyal to TK taken away.

Wait, DaveS aren't you still Elite Plus as shown on your profile?
If so seating should be free.
If not seating would become free at OLCI.

Yes, still Elite+. I have just gone in on the app again and it is showing the seats as free for the return for my daughter and myself! Well for the standard seat anyway. £36.8 for exit or extra leg room though. My wife is on a separate booking, so it still wants money for her (no status). So it looks like a glitch/bug in the app. I will argue my wifes case to sit with us at a sales desk in IST or TAS.

It's completely normal that the system would ask for money for your wife on a separate reservation. It's not a glitch or a bug.
You might try contacting a sales office for this and please report back your experience if you do so. By the way, seat selection is free during OLCI.

Yes, the glitch I was referring to was when it initially asked for payment against my own seat selection. I fully expected the fee on my wifes booking. On my own booking, it also priced in USD for all seats the first time round. On the second time it priced GBP for the exit seats. It looks like the app did not correctly look at my account the first time - I was fully logged in both times. This must be the app equivalent of HUACA.

Agree. You cannot add your FF to your wife's PNR - name validation would fail. So, from the system perspective your wife is a non-tiered passenger who needs to pay for the seat assignment. Not a glitch.

Thanks for clarifying.
We all know that TK IT isn't the best.

I came to TK from BMI after a status match. TK IT was definitely a step up up from BMI, though more often than not the BMI failings worked in your favour. Anyway, I could not name an airline that has flawless IT systems. Certainly not BA - their failings have been very public. And as for my last bookings with ET... Thankfully their sales office was next door!

TK has had for many years the WORST possible priority for its Elite passengers regarding Emergency Exit seats. Forgetting the fact that these should be free for at least their top tier elites, the way that they run their married segments and algorithm's mean that for example, an Elite Plus buying a last minute full Y fare is unable to even pay for an Emergency Exit seat, and is forced to ask for (and hope) one at the airport. So let's pretend that this is in a non-covid, time, a $1200 dollar Y RT IST-LHR-IST. Meanwhile a no status passenger might be flying ClUJ (or wherever......Kharkiv, SOF, etc.) on a $200 RT ticket, that passenger will be able to snag an emergency exit seat FOR FREE at check in, and may have checked in 2, 4, or even 12 hours before the Elite Plus passenger could even get to the airport to get such a seat. Worse, in my observation many of the out stations manned by third party people will just give these away seemingly at random, and often to people who speak neither English or Turkish. The system is garbage.

Also, god forbid that you PAY for an EE seat and then TK changes the aircraft...............very often teh computer will not catch this and instead of the EE aisle seat that you requested you will now be in a non EE seat, and in 8 our of 10 cases the local airport people will not care less and will do nothing to change things around.................and then have fun trying to get a refund if it is not fixed..........you can count on having to write dozens of e-mails and lots of stress................and this is how they treat their BEST customers................

This is a completely true assumption.

TK is not treating their own elites well in terms of emergency exit rows so it sometimes makes sense for me to fly another airline ( especially in long-haul where exit-row seats are $150 pp in TK ) that gives free exit-row seating ( for their own or alliance elites ). Leaving this aside, hfly 's point is completely true, as an ELPL member, I always ask for an exit row seat at check-in, and at IST departures, I generally get the answer, except for middle seats they are completely full. This is not because the passengers paid but because outstation agents are assigning these seats randomly to people who are flying XXX-IST-YYY which would check-in at his origin hours ago before I check in at IST.

For ex-outstation flights, if you're not one of the ones who go checking-in first, the situation is the same. As the seats are first come first served, passengers who go to the airport 3-4 hours before departure and wait until the counters open get those seats compared to elites that usually arrive within the 1-2 hours mark before the flight.

Plus, don't forget that TK is one of the rare airlines that does not have theoretical seating for elites. In most other carriers such as Lufthansa, British Airways, Swiss, Qatar Airways; if there are empty seats, the seat next to status passengers are blocked in Y for the convenience of the passenger and as a sign of an appreciation of the loyalty. What TK does is that there is no theoretical seating and an outstation agent could assign, two passengers next to an Elite or Elite Plus in a 3 seat block while a non-status one-time flyer could enjoy his own row to himself.

Let's also don't forget that some outstations that don't have TK's own system would also don't honor what seat you've chosen online during the reservation process as they can't see it. These are mostly outstations that OLCI is not possible.

Oh, and let's not forget about key seats in long haul business class! How many times as an Elite Plus have I wanted a first row seat in long haul business class, you know when I am paying top dollar for it, but not able to reserve a first row seat? Why is this? Because it is needed for an Emergency? No. Is it a Pilot seat? No. Is it for "security"? No. It is because more often than not it is reserved for the possibility of a VIP (and the definition of VIP is extremely flexible as it can be the wife or a cousin of a council member of a third tier Turkish town), but I will leave that alone.............but is instead reserved for a Pilot's wife or children! I have no problem with crew's family having flight rights, nor them flying upfront. However like on most other airlines they should NOT be flying positive space, and even if they are, they should NOT have the "pick" of the best seats.......They can have the middle seats towards the back of a 777 for example.

Regarding the patent idiocy of the EE seat situation for E+ passengers, I have had many conversations with "powers that be" at TK, and while all admit that it is NOT a good situation, when investigated I hear that it is being "worked on" and that it is a very "complex issue". I have been hearing this now for at least a decade. They have dropped the ball so many times that a canyon has formed where the ball drops.

To confirm, *AG still doesn’t receive any type of seating benefits with TK?

Yes, partner *G's do not get any seating benefits.

Thank you!

It has worked for me on SQ and others, but I've no idea about current policy across the alliance.

If there is an extant list of those carriers giving seat choice to all *G members, it would be nice to see it.

From my experiences within the last few years as a TK*G

A3 -> You need to pay for seat selection as a non-status pax.
AV -> You need to pay for seat selection as a non-status pax.
LH/OS/LX -> You need to pay for seat selection as a non-status pax.
LO -> Would give free seat selection to TK*G's on all fares
TP -> You need to pay for seat selection as a non-status pax.
UA -> You need to pay for seat selection as a non-status pax until OLCI. At OLCI, preferred seats ( not EconomyPlus, the front row main Economy seats that are chargeable ) become free of charge

For all other *A carriers, I don't have any recent experience.

Interesting. Thank you.

Well if farmers start flying half as much as sailors, then I guess they would also get special arrangements.

Seaman tickets can be booked on most airlines for sailors at a heavily discounted rate, often with larger baggage allowance, no min/max stay requirements, discounted one-way fares, no rebooking/cancellation fees, often without requiring a visa to the final destination assuming they have all the required documentation in place (handled by their manning agency), etc. Unfortunately, seaman tickets usually don't allow you to collect miles.

So we are 4 people, who booked through United: SFO-FRA (UA), then FRA-IST (TK), but I'm having no luck getting us seated next to each other.

We are on 3 different reservations, as one is a miles ticket, two are on a cheaper economy, and I'm in higher grade economy (to pump up my United status, and I'm a Star Gold).

Any tricks to getting TK to seat us together ahead of time? United can't do it (even though TK tells you they can - I know they can't). The Turkish call center doesn't seem to help, they suggest calling the SF ticket office but that just routes back to the Turkish call center.

At the moment, the day we check in with United, we'll be given automatic seats not together on TK with no way to fix it. Any tips?

If you have the Turkish PNR's for each respective tickets, you could try to purchase seats via the app.
You are also right in the fact that United would auto assign seats for the TK segments if there are no seats assigned. Worst case scenario, the gate agent in Frankfurt might able to reseat you all together.

Does anyone have tips for getting the seats assigned in advance? I'd even pay the $15 per seat, but the app and the website don't let me do so. You can't click on anything to pay for it.

For partner issued tickets, it's a pain.

The best way to do it is to go visit a sales office or an airport ticketing counter in person as in case they encounter an error, they would call the back office.
If you e-mail or call one of the offices, most likely, you would get a response that they wouldn't be able to reserve seats for your specific reservation.

Still nothing is working - I did hit them up on Twitter, they responded pretty fast but said to just call their call center, which of course, has no clue how to assign seats when they were purchased via United. Still trying various options.

This post is a bit old, so so I wonder if seat selection indeed still free during OLCI for economy class passengers? This page https://www.turkishairlines.com/en-i...ions/check-in/ says that seats are assigned randomly during check-in and they cannot be changed once the boarding pass has been printed. So, does it work the same way as with Iberia or BA, for instance?

The section you're referring to is for "Domestic Flights" only.
For international flights and for domestic flights having an international connection, seat selection is still free during OLCI.

Having just returned from this trip, it was a comedy of incompetence all along. Turkish is the worst for advance seat assignments, and their IT is absolutely horrible. Even though I am half Turkish, I will avoid them as much as I can after this trip!!

Data Point: Booked a TK business class award ticket (US-IST-Asia) on the website - at the time of booking, I was able to select a seat on the IST-Asia segment, but not the US-IST segment. This is my 2nd booking for 2021 with the identical experience regarding seat selection.

Appears that seat selection is blocked for business class award tickets to/from North America - has anyone else had similar data points for reservations made in 2021?