I am booking 4 award tickets for my family and myself on CO EWR-LHR for late June on a 777. Offered 16F/J/K/L (bulkhead). I am CO Gold, but no one else has status. We are all on the same PNR.

I am concerned that, once the new program rules go into effect, at least 2 of the seats will get reassigned into the back of the cabin. The rules are murky; they only cover E+ seats (which allow only me +1 in E+).

Anyone have any perspective/advice? Thanks.

 

This is a tough one.

Even if they don't do sweep it and change seats, if they swap aircraft you may lose the seats and have difficulty getting them back.

The history will show that you had those seats, so you could use this as basis for reestablishing them, but as I understand it, CO's systems don't necessarily provide agents with the access to this type of history so it could be difficult.

 

My only concern would be losing your seats due to equip. swap. CO hasn't been sweeping people out of ELR like UA does.

 

It's been a crapshoot. Last month, we flew two Shark family award itins. These were domestic. One got reissued a few weeks before and resulted in non-status Shark members on separate PNR being evicted from E+ where I'd asked for us all to sit after booking, but the other one did not and they flew E+. I think that the difference was UA at some point between ticketing and travel took ownership of the outbound flights although they were booked on CO with CO flight numbers. The other one remained CO flight numbers although UA metal.

My takeaway is that the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing and you might hang on to the assignments if there's no sched change/reissue/equipment swap. But you cannot be sure.

 

How about seat assignments preselected in E+ for a 2P for a flight in the future, after the 2012 elite program is likely to have kicked in (March)? Are E+ seat assignments on flights booked now going to be kept after the new program kicks in? This is a March trip to MEL from the US east coast, so the answer matters for which airline I buy the ticket on. (I'll probably book QF if I can't expect to keep E+ seat assignments made at booking now.)

 

Have no particularily insights and with the changing of systems it will be hard to predict how special cases will be handled (UACO probably does not know in some cases)

But historically, it is the status and benefits at time of flight that matters - although your status at booking / seat assignment is needed to get the seat assignment.
For UA, once seated in E+ you were pretty safe unless you involved an agent or their was an aircraft change / or certain schedule changes. You status at that interaction affect the outcome.

 

All, CO still grants all pax with tickets from Elite miles "Elite" status. That part is expected to stay for the time being, no?

But really hard to predict until March 2012.

OP - I wouldn't worry about it, but would check your seats post-March more frequently.

 

also by the time the OP flys could be a nice # of COs 777 will have E+ , so even if the bulkhead is lost tehy might beable to get different E+ anyway. Also those 2 aisle seats can be taken for special needs people

 

Hadn't thought of that -- does that happen frequently?

Taking 2 seats away from us -- because new E+ is installed on CO metal or b/c special needs pax need aisles -- is a problem because my family wants to sit together. By the time a seat change happens there will probably only be 4 seats together at the back of the plane. In my experience the agents are not sympathetic at all about where our original seat assignments were. The choice will be to either pay for E+ for the 3rd & 4th seat, or everyone moves to the rear.

Sounds like this is a gamble any way we look at it. Will probably book the bulkhead seats and spend the next 6 months checking the chart every other day.

 

Or, you know, several times a day. ;-)

 

could be theres less of it on an Intl flight, but whens the last time you flew and didnt see any wheelchairs waiting on the jetway? However not everyone who is entitled to those seats wants them since the arm rests dont go up

I just grabbed 1 of those seats for my mom and was told even she could lose it if another person who turns out being worse off then she is requests it