zombietooth

I hadn't thought about ExpertFlyer because I haven't used in them so long due to lack of UG seats on my routes. That is a possibility.

However, what are the odds that, in both our cases above, the 1K agents would tell us that no equipment swaps had occurred and, in my case, that FlightAware would show no changes in equipment.

United747

My guess is frontline agents don’t know how to see the full flight record that shows which specific tails were assigned to a flight. You’d be surprised how often those things change

view-with-a-room

Embraer 175 MCI to DEN. 2-3 weeks prior to flight $59 seat purchase from 23C to 7A. One week prior to flight the seat reverts from 7A to 23C; and in turn I change seats from 23C to 7A. To date I have changed seats from 23C to 7A three times. The other three segments haven't reverted to the original seats and the seat purchases remain in place. Neither seat are blocked per ExpertFlyer. Flight departs in three days. I think will send a comment to United and tell them if they want 7A they can have 7A but move me to first, not the back of the plane...

Update. The DEN to MCI segment is now reverting back to the economy seat, the back of the plane economy seats. Still haven't heard back from United.

mozilla

As posted earlier, I also experienced a similar situation, although the seat I got wasn't any worse, so I didn't write about it at the time.

With the current leisure-heavy demand, it has become much easier to be sure that the beneficiary of the seat change is not a FAM. In light of these recent experiences, I suggest re-evaluating the current FT belief that VIP requests for specific seats in their booked cabin are subject to denial. Why would UA not want to give their very best customers the seat they want in the current market?

As demonstrated, GA's have no clue why the seat assignment changed, so unless the beneficiary talks about it, the re-accommodated passenger will never know or be told it was a FAM in board shorts and sandals with his kids in tow.

fed planner

Booked a flight to Europe for next month last week. Used PP to upgrade right after booking (the big legs cleared). However, my seat assignment on DEN-FRA keeps disappearing, pretty much once a day. I even tried selecting another seat, and it dropped as well. While I'm hopeful for a swap to true Polaris, there doesn't appear to be any reason this seat assignment keeps dropping. Any thoughts on what to do, other than keep checking the reservation daily (or more)?

WineCountryUA

Have you talked to an agent about this? After the second unsuccessful attempt, it seems time to try a different approach.

fed planner

Well, it is more fun to keep checking . . .

But, yeah, I should call and see what's up.

LarryJ

I don't know if this is what is happening to you but I have seen a display error on the web page when I view a reservation that makes it look like I don't have a seat assignment when I actually do.

When I view the reservation, there is no seat listed in the place for the seat assignment but when I click the link to go to the seat map to choose a seat, my seat assignment is shown on the seat map. In those cases, the seat assignment is fine, it just isn't displaying where it is supposed to in the reservation display.

fed planner

Nope - seat map shows no sign of a seat assignment (when it goes away, at least). When it is there, it looks correct both on the seat map and in the reservation. And it is only happening on the same 1 of 5 segments in the reservation.

fed planner

I called United - nothing they could do - as the seat was assigned (once again, after disappearing and me adding it back manually). Agent said that should only happen with a schedule or equipment change - neither of which has happened). Though, I am hoping for a change to a Polarized 787-9 . . .

Halo117

So a few weeks back we had a similar issue in which my wife was on a different pnr same flight but what was odd was that when looking at my reservation her seat was clickable and reservation would save me in her seat. Called 1k desk had agent pull up both records come to find out my reservation was showing ghost seats and that my assigned seats were not locked on the internal servers.It took the agent contacting a supervisor whom has access to the backend seatmap and fixed the issue. Agent acknowledged that this issue was only caught by me due to having a separate pnr and it would have caused unassigned seats at checkin.

I would call in and ask web support or supervisor to check the seat assignments as this could be similar to what I had. I suspect it was caused with aircraft swaps and schedule changes.

TWA Guy

Flying IAD-SFO on the Hi-J 763 on Thursday and grabbed 4 premium plus seats for our family. Wife and daughter in 22DF, son and I in 22KL. Wife gets a text that aircraft has changed so they moved her seats but she can select new ones. They moved wife and daughter to...22AB. Cabin was booked full and new aircraft has same exact seatmap. Was hoping to all sit together but assume UA won't do anything. Was this possibly for air marshalls? TIA!

goyankees32790

has anyone noticed this happening more lately? I'm two out of the last two, moved from 2A to 1D on an E-170 and 8F to 11A (no window) on the 738.

lincolnjkc

Maybe I've been lucky but thus far no. If the flights were recent enough it would be interesting to plug them into something like FlightStats.com (then click Flight Details) and see if there was an equipment change somewhere along the way.

I've had a number of segments in the recent past that have been up-gauged from the E170 to the E175 it seems logical that there may be some segments that went the other direction or got up-gauged and then quickly down-guaged

VRFast

How many days out from flight do you see this? Equipment change or just random seat change on same aircraft?