Reader Dave S. writes in:

I read your “open letter” to Lufthansa with some interest. I’m also frustrated with Lufthansa, but for slightly different reasons. They keep deleting my seat assignments for a flight I’m taking in December. I am one of those people who carefully picks his seats in advance, and then obsessively looks up the seating chart every few weeks, and every time, the original assignment is cancelled. Sometimes the seats we chose are still blank (we have an aisle and a middle) but sometimes they put someone else in the aisle seat we reserved. I call them up and they tell me there’s nothing they can do. What am I doing wrong?

Dave, you’re not alone, and you’re not doing anything wrong. Just last month I heard some stories of people losing their seats repeatedly on Lufthansa.

Lufthansa may be worse than others, though I have no statistics to support that allegation, but it’s not alone, either. Most airlines offer seat reservations for longhaul routes, but won’t necessarily guarantee them, in a Seinfeld-ian way.

Some seat changes are understandable, especially if there is ever an equipment change. If the carrier swaps, say, an Airbus 340 for a Boeing 747, your seat assignments may be lost.

But you are right to try to pre-select and defend your seats. Smart seat selection is one of the easiest way to maximize your travel comfort, especially on long flights, so I advise readers to consult SeatGuru and SeatExpert for advice on choosing the best seat.

Then, stay on top of the airline. Some airlines let you view your seat assignments when you log in using your frequent flyer number. But to be sure, periodically run a search for your flights and look at the seatmap. (Try an agency like Orbitz or Expedia if the operating airline doesn’t make real-time seatmaps conveniently accessible.) If something looks suspicious, call and verify.

Not having a seat assignment can put you at a further disadvantage when you’re checking in: You’re stuck with the limited supply of seats that more proactive passengers have left you. Or even worse, you might be first in line to get involuntarily bumped off the flight, if the plane is overbooked and you’re without a seat.

Keep records of whom you spoke with if you made assignments on the phone, or print copies of reservations if changes are made online. If seats are deleted again, call their customer service number to complain. But there’s unfortunately no way to guarantee your seats aren’t taken away.

(Note: E-mail from readers is always welcome. Got a problem, a question, a complaint, or a compliment related to travel, for business or pleasure? Use the “contact” link at the top right of the screen and drop a line anytime.)

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Flying Maxjet or Eos?

Looking to choose the best seats on the plane?

SeatExpert now covers the two all-business class airlines. Seats are color-coded for good, bad, and so-so seating, but annotated comments are yet to come. See here for Eos, and here for Maxjet. (The odd shape of Eos’ seats on the map reflects their use of ottomans and privacy partitions in their seating units.)

Flying Southwest?
Savvy Southwest flyers have been checking in online 24 hours before their flight, to get that boarding pass in group A and assure themselves of early boarding. Many use automated check-in services that guarantee an A pass, since they’re cheap, or even free.

But legitimate “A” holders may be fighting for space with cheaters. Someone posted a method of hacking your boarding pass to change the B or C to an A. It’s astonishingly simple, and it’s frankly an embarrassment to Southwest that their boarding passes are so easily manipulated. (No, you can’t create a boarding pass willy-nilly and fly around the country for free… the barcode still contains the information about you and your itinerary.) A similar trick could be used to change the date and print yourself a boarding pass for security, if you wanted to accompany a friend to the gate. (It won’t let you on a plane.) This latter trick I have no problem with, since you’d just be using the boarding pass to enter security, not cheating your way into better seats.

I wonder how long it will take before the company changes the HTML of the passes to prevent this sort of hack. When 137 people line up with “A” passes, with no one in “B” or “C”? Start the clock. (Via digg, thanks to reader BJ!)

(images: Maxjet, ladygypsy)

UPDATE 2, December 3, 2007: Southwest issued cease-and-desist orders to the last of the remaining sites. Looks like the automated check-in game is over.

UPDATE: As of October 2007, most third-party services offering Southwest automated check-in have folded. See here for the update. Of the services mentioned below, only PlaneFast is still offering the service for a donation, not a fee. The remainder of this post follows, as originally published.

Since Southwest Airlines doesn’t have assigned seating, but assigns boarding areas on the basis of how early you check in to your flight, it’s long been known that an early check-in (preferably online) is the key to getting a good seat. So a cottage industry developed, with websites such as boardfirst.com, apassonly.com, and alineonline.com offering the service of checking you in automatically at the first possible moment, to guarantee you one of the approximately 45 boarding passes in group A. (Reminds me of sniping sites that put in bids for you at the last second on eBay.)

Of these three sites, only APassOnly.com has caved to the legal pressure, and is no longer accepting new customers. Go ahead and use the other sites if you like. They charge about $5 per use.

Southwest apparently doesn’t like anyone getting the automated upper hand, so they’re suing these sites (WSJ – subscription required). Their suit names “fraud, unfair competition and trademark infringement, among other things.” In particular, Southwest suggests that these other firms are violating the terms and conditions of the website — they are accessing passenger records as non-family third parties.

The argument is specious. I’m not sure if the airline is getting complaints from too many Group B ticketholders, or if they’re just control freaks. But the services are working on behalf of the ticketholders, at the ticketholders’ request — I would argue that they’re authorized users of the website as a result. And if you have an open seating policy (which I find awful to begin with) then you’re always going to find people looking to beat the system. Don’t like that? Then allow assigned seats. Most people I know prefer to know where they’re sitting.

In the meantime, if you’re flying Southwest, auto-check-in or not, and you’re looking for the best seats, print the SeatGuru seatmap and target a nice aisle or window. (Caveat: The map is for the 737-300, not the newer 737-700. If you see winglets jutting up at the end of the wings, you’re on your own…)

(Update June 8, 2006: Reader VS reports that PlaneFast, another service offering automated check-in, is still up and running — and that they’re FREE to use. The site works on a donation basis, not a fee.)

(Update June 18, 2006: Reader Marie e-mails me another site that offers “A” boarding passes: Fly A Today charges $5.95 and claims a 99.6% rate of getting the A pass.)

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