International Seat Selection

[JohnK]

Regardless of the outcome definitely do the TCP as well. If done correctly by the agent it will make check in easier as you’ll be able to check in all at once if using OLCI or at the kiosks. Also helps when there are irrops etc.

Thanks. Bookings have already been linked as is the case each time we travel. We'll face same situation in August.

 

[JohnK]

Sometimes I hate Qantas and their inconsistency so much I seriously question my loyalty.

Wife and daughter flying BNE-SIN Wednesday on QF51. I didn't pay $80 to choose seats. OLCI opened this morning. I jumped online at 11:50am only to find this flight is unavailable for online checkin.

Check sest map 25AB available, 27AB available, 28AB available. All perfect pairs for wife and daughter. If I select them Qantas wants $80. What is going on?

Called Qantas and requested any of the above seats. Nope cannot be done online can only be done at airport. Why? Don't know. Your wife and daughter have been allocated 51AB. Why 51AB and not one of the 14 other window pairs in front of them still available? Don't know. Do they have status? Nope but what's that go to do with it? OLCI is open. Sorry that's not available they'll have to wait until they checkin.

Seriously Qantas? What's the point of OLCI if it's not available to be used as intended? My wife is not happy. I'm not very happy. Yes they have the pair by the window but wife not a great traveller and would like something closer to front and nearer toilet. Now we have to get to airport very early on Wednrsday in the hope of improving on those seats.

Qantas customer care truly does not care. The greed in this company gets worse by the day. They should rename the airline to Jetstar....

 

[mannej]

JohnK, have you attempted OLCI again? For whatever reasons it doesn’t always open up when it should.

 

[dylarr]

There are a couple of things that explain what has happened to you:

- Qantas has disabled OLCI and self-serve kiosk check in for certain destinations such as Singapore that have changed their immigration policies due to the Coronavirus outbreak (source). This is so check-in staff can perform additional checks to prevent uplifting passengers that would otherwise be refused entry at the destination.
- At around T-24 hours flights will go under airport control. At this point the authority to change things like seats is removed from the reservations team and restricted to airport based staff. This is so the reservations team don't undo important changes made by the airport team that they may not necessarily have the full context around as they are not 'on the ground'.
- Free seat selection for international passengers booked in classes E, N, O, Q is only available during the check-in flow, not the regular seat selection flow (they are two separate things). Reservations don't have access to the check-in flow and as you don't have access to this online you are only able to access the regular seat selection which is chargeable.

Unfortunately the agent you spoke to is right. As other passengers on your flight will not have been able to check in online, many booked in E, N, O, Q fares won't have seat selected unless they have forked out the $40/seat fee. I would try get to the airport as early as possible to check-in and be assigned preferable seats, or fork out the seat selection fee if you want to be sure.

 

[piglet]

I have the same problem with MEL - SIN as well, checked in, can't select seats (refused to pay $40!) and collect my boarding pass at airport. Customer service wouldn't allocate seats for me either, just told me to head to airport early!

 

[RichardMEL]

When a flight goes into airport control that's correct customer service can't allocate seats... or shouldn't be able to anyway.

 

[JohnK]

JohnK, have you attempted OLCI again? For whatever reasons it doesn’t always open up when it should.

Yes. Now able to checkin online but still cannot choose seats. In fact cannot print boarding pass and under seats there's blank entries.

When a flight goes into airport control that's correct customer service can't allocate seats... or shouldn't be able to anyway.

Customer service may not be able to allocate seats but part of the service Qantas is selling is OLCI and the ability to choose seats or upgrade existing poor seats.

I don't care what problems Qantas have begind the scenes. I can't do what their website promises I can do and that is poor.

But guess what? I can still pay $40 to a allocate seat. I should actually pay it and pray Joyce chokes on the payment.

 

[TheInsider]

Customer service may not be able to allocate seats but part of the service Qantas is selling is OLCI and the ability to choose seats or upgrade existing poor seats.

I don't care what problems Qantas have begind the scenes. I can't do what their website promises I can do and that is poor.

You need to get over it. OLCI is disabled for most international QF flights at the moment due to the Corona Virus and other country regulations and temporary restriction on people entering certain countries.
Every post is complaining about Qantas in one way or another, just stop flying them.

 

[JohnK]

You need to get over it. OLCI is disabled for most international QF flights at the moment due to the Corona Virus and other country regulations and temporary restriction on people entering certain countries.
Every post is complaining about Qantas in one way or another, just stop flying them.

Facts. I just checked in online so your statement about OLCI disabled is incorrect. But we'll still take your money if you want to pay for seat.

If every post is me complaining about Qantas then something at Qantas is not quite right as I have been one of their biggest supporters over the years.

Stop flying them may not be too far away and that's from someone who has been Platinum since 2007.

 

[RichardMEL]

I suppose it is interesting to know if EVERY airline has blocked OLCI for Singapore. I'm flying there tomorrow so will see (EK).

If, as you say, it's disabled due to Singapore regulations in this unusual situation then i agree. blaming QF is not very helpful.

OTOH *IF* OLCI is disabled for this specific reason, surely QF can bring up a dialog box or alert when attempting to do it to explain this.

I see JohnK's point in that respect - it's offered as a service, with no explanation for why it isn't working then I can understand the annoyance factor. I am sure John would be placated(somewhat) if given a notice when attempting to OLCI to explain (and also Customer Care should also know this and be able to inform pax).

Either way it seems a failure of QF in one way or another.....

 

[Ade]

I would also add asking nicely at QF F lounge if there is someone next to you insinuating that they put a seat block on the seat to be used las

This happened to me - two weeks ago - asked in F lounge if there's anyone sitting next to me on Intl Y, was confirmed no and the seat remained vacant for the entire duration of the flight

 

[RichardMEL]

I did not think WP had to pay the seat allocation fee? (that's an aside)

 

[dylarr]

I agree the OLCI should have been updated with messaging around why it's not possible to complete the check-in flow and issue boarding passes; also the customer service agents should have known why this was occuring. Definitely a miss by Qantas.

However Qantas did provide notification of this in their Travel Updates section which is linked from the yellow alert banner on their homepage, so they're not exactly trying to hide it:

Coronavirus travel update | Qantas

Specifically (emphasis mine):

Immigration changes
There have been changes to the immigration regulations for a number of countries/territories around the globe as a result of the coronavirus.

<snip>

These travel requirements are subject to change and we recommend you stay up to date with the latest changes.

Online check-in and airport self-serve kiosks may not be available for check-in to selected destinations.

 

[mannej]

I did not think WP had to pay the seat allocation fee? (that's an aside)

JohnK holds status, but his wife and daughter may not (and I assume are on a separate booking)

 

[RichardMEL]

Another tought.. of OLCI is OK, but no seat selection during this process.. has the aircraft reached a max allocated seats? Or just not two seats together available to select? Oversold? It would be interesting to know if there's a reason other than a glitch, or the aforementioned immigration requirements changes (but if you can OLCI I would see no reason why seats could not be allocated even with changed policies regarding any extra screening/questions at check in prior to BP issuance)

 

[JohnK]

I agree the OLCI should have been updated with messaging around why it's not possible to complete the check-in flow and issue boarding passes; also the customer service agents should have known why this was occuring. Definitely a miss by Qantas.

However Qantas did provide notification of this in their Travel Updates section which is linked from the yellow alert banner on their homepage, so they're not exactly trying to hide it.

For the record I've seen all the notifications and have received 2 SMS's regarding travelling to SIN related to travel to Mainland China in the past 2 weeks.

I thought OLCI was blocked but I've now proven that it's not blocked but I can't print boarding pass.

Please answer the question on why I cannot choose seats during this OLCI process but Qantas still happy to take my money if I choose to pay for those seats.

This is not a whinge. This is Qantas not delivering on a stated feature we paid extra to have available to us. Qantas have failed and they can get away with it.

 

[RichardMEL]

Please answer the question on why I cannot choose seats during this OLCI process but Qantas still happy to take my money if I choose to pay for those seats.

This is not a whinge. This is Qantas not delivering on a stated feature we paid extra to have available to us. Qantas have failed and they can get away with it.

Of course it could well be that if you paid the $40 (or attempted to) that may not work either if they are not allowing seat assignments at this point for whatever reasons. I am not suggesting you try it though (if you do not want to!) to find out !!

I guess if you can't select seats how can you print a BP? It may be QF IT's (poor) way of "blocking" OLCI by not letting you complete it.
Interestingly I had a similar issue with UA last year where OLCI "worked" but would not let me fully complete the process with random messages that made no sense. It turned out (as an agent told me at check in) that that ticket was a one way flight and they needed to confirm in person I had a flight out of the USA before they would check me in (I had a QF reward seat out so it was no issue). There was no obvious indication this was the case from OLCI that this was the issue.

It all does seem a bit strange.

BTW I have not received ANY notification from either EK or QF (codeshare) re my own SIN flights... so you've gotten more than me Hope you feel special!!

 

[JohnK]

It all does seem a bit strange.

BTW I have not received ANY notification from either EK or QF (codeshare) re my own SIN flights... so you've gotten more than me Hope you feel special!!

Not special at all. Actually the opposite.

You are due to travel with Qantas in the coming days. Restrictions currently exist for your destination. If you have been in mainland China within the past 14 days, please click on the below link to see what options are available to you. Further information can be found on the homepage on qantas.com.

 

[JohnK]

JohnK holds status, but his wife and daughter may not (and I assume are on a separate booking)

This where Qantas makes me angry.

If I make a booking for myself, wife and daughter we would have had complimentary seat selection for all 3 of us.

But I make 2 bookings as wife and daughter are travelling tomorrow and I'm travelling next week. We're returning on same flights.

Qantas still received the money for 3 travellers. I explained the story. This is where Qantas should have jumped through hoops to help this long term Platinum and it would have cost them nothing. Yes nothing at all. But instead of trying to make me feel special they come up with stupid, senseless excuses.

We're going again in August. Again different outbound flights but same inbound flights. It's not certain I'm booking Qantas again and that's not a good thing. SQ doesn't yet have 787s.

 

[RichardMEL]

Scoot has 787's... is that what you want? I would say the SQ A350's are pretty nice too, but I digress.

John if they are booked under a separate booking then IMO you are asking a bit much. Sure it's your family and I get that, but they don't have status. So maybe since I'm P1 but my no status nobody mate is flying to Japan I should just get him an free exit row? I wouldn't even ask for my sister who is flying to OOL in a week. I don't know of any other airline who would extend benefits in this case (with the exception of redeeming points for tickets)

Sure, common sense would hopefully see an agent take pity but if non status pax are on separate bookings.....