swingspan

I'm ticketed in Y on what was an old 777 from LHR to IAD. Now it's been swapped for the new one, not surprisingly.

What is surprising is that I tried to pick new seats, but it won't work. The website says seats assigned, but then when I get back to the reservation screen, they're unassigned. While I spent three minutes working on this, the seats I wanted all vanished -- presumably assigned to others. (Was hoping,for example, to get 20 J/K.

Called the UK line and they say the flight it under airport control. ?? More than 24 hours before departure?

Any ideas? I don't want to end up in E- because of this.

Cheers.

OtleyFlyer

I've had this before - and seen the web and phone agents locked out up to 4 days before departure too. If your old seats exist on the new config you're probably OK. If not, I'd make sure I checked in early.

swingspan

So I was able to check in. Lousy seats in the middle of E+. I saw the exit & bulkhead seats disappear one by one before I could check in. Clearly assigned to others. I have trouble believing there were that many folks ahead of me on Y on this flight. Sigh.

Might try to switch to another flight with bulkheat seats.

I understand that aircraft swaps happen. What I don't understand is how they decide who gets the exit & bulkhead seats on the new equipment.

OtleyFlyer

I don't think there is a consistent picture, but my impression out of LHR is that they keep you in the same seat if it exists, but sometimes will try and preserve aisle or window seats. Bulkheads in this situation are a bit of a lottery, but I've had bulkhead moved to bulkhead before now too. It may be because I'm 1K though. But the best advice is pick a seat that exists in both configs and you have a better chance of getting it to stick.

swingspan

Well, right. But there are only a couple of seats in which one gets a bulkhead, for example, in both configs.

Anyway, it will be nice when the old seatmap is gone for good. It's the only real solution to this issue.

LongingForORD

Had a configuration swap on my last LHR-SFO flight. Went from 2 seats together on the side, to 2 center seats in the bulkhead. Was not happy, told them when I checked in, told them again at the gate, really bad way to treat a 1K, of course "it's not our fault" at UA.

Once the plane boarded completely, (not full), gate agent came on board, talking into his walkie-talkie trying to figure out how to pronounce Ms. LongingForORD, said they were really sorry, and if we would both like aisle, we could split apart on the plane. He went thru the list of open seats and asked what we would like.

So moral of the story, let them know if the swap has inconvenienced you, and possibly they will try to help. It is a long flight to be stuck in a middle seat. In this instance, the squeaky wheel got some of the grease!

lhrsfo

There seem to be three situations when there's an equipment swap - and we know a week in advance through UnitedCargo:
1. As the OP describes, with everything completely messed up
2. New map comes alive c.2 days before the flight or
3. No new map, but OLCI works with the new map at T-24h.

It's all random and UA has brought new meaning to YMMV with this charade.

the cranky banker

I had a similar situation the other day LHR-IAD and found myself reassigned to a further-back E+ seat being one of only two single/aisle seat folks in the entire E+ cabin who had someone seated directly next to them (ie no empty middle seat). While my seatmates were a lovely, good-humored couple, I nonetheless felt slightly persecuted -- so I made a feeble attempt with an FA and was told to choose any other aisle seat in the cabin once the seatbelt sign went off. There were MANY to choose from. I did so and actually got a better seat out of it.

But why am I frequently the first to get people seated directly next to them when E+ starts to fill up? I'm assuming this is some kind of status trump and my lifetime Premier Executive Million Mile status -- or whatever its new name is -- is not cutting it against higher-status people. Sigh.