What to do when there are no seats?
 

I'm told there are no seats left for my flight (Flight 185 IAD-OAK on August 3rd). I was really hoping for economy plus this time (as a lowly 2P I've been denied that on my last two flights), but now can't even manage to reserve an economy seat almost two weeks ahead. I've called premier reservations twice with no luck.

What's going on? I'd really appreciate any suggestions on how to avoid getting stuck with that middle non-reclining seat in the very back of the A320... (I thought I said goodbye to that seat for the last time when I made premier!)

Thanks

An idea would be to show up VERY early for the flight so that way you're ahead of the others when it comes to seat selections for those who did not get a seat number in the first place. That's not going to guarantee you a seat in E+ though... but it's worth a shot.

Sounds like they hit their limit for pre-assigned seats. Sometimes, you have to wait until you check in to get a seat, and it sounds like this is one of those.

Make your reservations further in advance.

Try online checkin exactly 24 hours before your flight (when it's first available).

I did a dummy booking: there are a couple of seats open in rows 7/8, and row 9 is wide open. Call back and try again.

Edited to add:

Here's the seat map:
http://photos.yahoo.com/aqqnn

Click on the UA 185 photo.

I'm showing 7C/F, 8C/D, 9A/B/C/D/E/F all available in Economy Plus.

Try again. Make sure your Mileage Plus number is in there reflecting your status.

If you booked your trip before making 2P, you need to have reservations remove your M+ number and re-enter it so that your new status can show up in the reservation. This will unlock E+ seats for them to pre-assign.

Even if you are still stuck with an E- seat at check-in, not all is lost. Since at least a few of the E+ passengers are likely to upgrade to 1st or biz, you ay be able to snatch the E+ seats they left behind at the gate.

This is good advice, but you might do one better by calling reservations after each of the elite upgrade windows end (at 120, 100, 72, 48, and 24 hrs.). If you make a dummy booking for a FC tix and see that there are more than a couple FC seats open, chances are that some MP elites will be upgraded into those seats at their upgrade window time.

Thanks! success...
 

Ah -- I called again, was again told nothing was available. I persisted (especially seeing the dummy bookings, thanks!) but still no seats even in economy. This time the agent was puzzled too, and put me on hold to "fix" my reservation.

Happily in E+ now thanks to persistence -- I was about to give up if not for you guys!

PS - sftrvlr and nerd were right on about availability, seatguru told me to stay away from the wide open row 9 -- guess a lot of people look at seatguru!

Hello.
I have found that reservation agents cannot see the same seating chart that you can at home on your computer screen when making a booking( real or dummy) on the UA web site.

Last week I was helping my sister get window seats on an up-coming trip and I was told there were none left by the res. agent on the phone. So I did a dummy booking on line and lo-and-behold there were a good few open for the taking on the seating chart. We both realised we had different seating charts for the same flight.

However a supervisor was able to over-ride the situation and assign window seats.

So I will always ask politely "maybe a supervisor can help us?" if this happens again in the future.

Good for you for not giving up ^

Dummy Booking
 

Guess the name fits!

48-Seats available on your requested date 3 Aug 05, for Flight # 185, as of 12:46PDT today.