LAN seat selection

[Libbyl]

Hi, My husband and I are booked (return business class) from Sydney to Santiago and then on to Buenos Aires at Christmas I am a QFF Platinum and One World Emerald. I have tried to go into the LAN website (what a frightful website!!!) to choose my seats and whilst I can do so on the short legs I am unable to select my seats for the long haul. The outbound flight is the QF code share. I have rung LAN (again a frightful experience) and they said I will be allocated seats on check-in. What is this all about? Do they not recognise the Emerald FF status? Additionally because they use a different system to QANTAS I can not see my booking when I log in to the Qantas FF website and so can not even select my outgoing seat that way either. It's the last time I book with LAN. Any assistance or explanation would be much appreciated. Thanks

 

[opusman]

In my experience they'll preallocate decent seats based on WP status, and you can choose your own when you check in online 48 hours before flight. Don't panic about it - if you can't preallocate seats the odds are no one else can either.

 

[RooFlyer]

Yes, LAN can be a bit of a difficult one. They DO recognise OW status however. QF Plats / OW Emeralds should be able to reserve forward 3 row seats at any time out - see this thread started by JohnM:

I had problems with it, but it worked for JohnM fine. I too called LAN and it was useless. Eventually I got my TA to elect the seats for me, and they stuck. First 3 rows definitely for OW and LAN status pax; 'Preferente' on the BP is great too - LAN's priority boarding is really worth it (just you or maybe 1 other in the Preferente lane, Vs a scrum).

If your long hauls are QF codeshare on LAN metal (ie via Auckland), then the QFF Plat line should be able to allocate those seats - give them a call anyway, especially as you can't see your booking on QF Manage My Booking. Make sure you have both the LAN and the QF booking references -they will be different (Plat line should be able to retrieve the other if you only have one).

Watch out for schedule changes with LAN within Sth America!!

All in all, I've found LAN to be pretty good in the air, and their SCL lounge is great. Some pics and commentary on the LAN long haul here. Pics and discussion of the SCL lounge here.

 

[Sprucegoose]

I booked LAN & TAM seats the other day through QF and searing was no problem at all..

 

[JohnM]

The only time I've had any problem with LAN (one of my favourite OWA airlines, BTW) is when I got a little too smart on my xONE5 last year and booked JFK-SCL as an AA codeshare on LAN 787 metal to glean extra points.

Backfired on me when I couldn't select my seat, no matter what I tried. Ended up in the last row of J on the aisle . The ignominy of not being in my usual 1A on LAN flights was almost too much to bear - still getting over it :shock::mrgreen:.

 

[Milboo]

I am currently holding LAN marketed and QF operated tickets and it's been a nightmare to honest - especially as my first foray into the OW world.

LAN only have certain blocks of seats allocated to them on the flight to market - and it's a 'hard' set I.e. they are those particular seats and not just any 50 (say) seats.

At the time of booking my TA got seat allocation for us - row 43. Fast forward 6 weeks and these had changed to row 65.

Rang LAN - they refused to deal with me as they said it was a QF operated flight and had no ability to do seating....yeah ok...they also would not provide me with the QF PNR - and the flights are not in my QF My Bookings despite my FF number on the booking.

Rang QF Gold and at this stage they can't even see my booking! They can see my ticket but that's it - so they could not do anything even though they wanted to.

So went back to my TA and she restored the seats!

QF advice was to wait until T-24 and ring then as the reservation will be released to them - assuring me that my status would be recognised at the airport too.

So massive drama really!

 

[JohnM]

I am currently holding LAN marketed and QF operated tickets and it's been a nightmare to honest - especially as my first foray into the OW world.

LAN only have certain blocks of seats allocated to them on the flight to market - and it's a 'hard' set I.e. they are those particular seats and not just any 50 (say) seats.

At the time of booking my TA got seat allocation for us - row 43. Fast forward 6 weeks and these had changed to row 65.

Rang LAN - they refused to deal with me as they said it was a QF operated flight and had no ability to do seating....yeah ok...they also would not provide me with the QF PNR - and the flights are not in my QF My Bookings despite my FF number on the booking.

Rang QF Gold and at this stage they can't even see my booking! They can see my ticket but that's it - so they could not do anything even though they wanted to.

So went back to my TA and she restored the seats!

QF advice was to wait until T-24 and ring then as the reservation will be released to them - assuring me that my status would be recognised at the airport too.

So massive drama really!

Sounds a bit like my experience of choosing the AA codeshare on LA metal.

Certainly when I've done a QF JASA that's included an LA-metal sector, I've noticed the 'fixed' seat allocation to QF pax - but in J it's essentially one side of the cabin, so I've had no trouble selecting 1A.

I think you'd find no problems ticketed LA on LA metal, so I think it's a codeshare issue - not LA being problematic.

 

[Milboo]

The odd thing is my friend I am travelling with has a QF PNR and can see it in her FF account because she has an AU domestic leg - coming from BNE for a SYD departure.

QF are baffled.

 

[Sprucegoose]

The odd thing is my friend I am travelling with has a QF PNR and can see it in her FF account because she has an AU domestic leg - coming from BNE for a SYD departure.

QF are baffled.

I'm baffled !!! I got QF to do my LAN seating no problems at all

 

[Milboo]

I'm baffled !!! I got QF to do my LAN seating no problems at all

Yeah - they can do hers - except it is not showing her as seating exempt so she can access the seats I can access as QF can't link her ticket to mine for this purpose - because mine doesn't 'exist' in their system!

 

[Pat2065]

We love South America and find LAN a good airline in the air but terrible on the ground. We are soon to take another trip and I cannot select the preferential seats we are entitled to as Emerald OW pax. We are on a QF ticket but the internal SA flights are all on LAN. The LAN website invites you choose the preferential seats and makes a point about them being for OW emerald pax, but once selected, the online system just spins round and never completes the process. When you call them (terrible experience) they tell you that these preferential seats can only be selected online and they are not authorised to do it. Fine, but useless if the website doesn't work. Their next option is tell you to wait until check in, by which time these seats are gone. There never seems to be a supervisor available to speak to. I will see if QF can do it but they seem to hit the same barriers with LAN.
This is not a new problem. We've taken at least 20 LAN flights in the last 5 years and I have rarely been able to select seats (preferential or otherwise) on line and not all in the last couple of years. Most flights have been J so LAN have been OK to do it over the phone. However, it seems almost impossible to get preferential seats for Y flights online. On a few occasions, they have done it over the phone, but typically they just say no, and sometimes just hang up on you. I could write pages on the terrible experiences we've had on the ground with LAN - lack of communication about changed/cancelled flights, changing seats with no advice to last row of economy and/or not together, refusal to recognise OW emerald status, declining to allow my husband and I to have seats together when one on QF ticket and on LAN ticket, etc. However, once one gets around these extraordinary hurdles, in the air they have been consistently good.

 

[RooFlyer]

The seat selection issue was exactly my experience (see link above), but not others. It must be a particular type of booking that causes the problem. Eventually I got my Travel Agent to make the seat selections, which stuck.

 

[juddles]

As Pat says - once off the ground they are good.

I do the transpac on the QF/LAN codeshares quite frequently and I can attest that seatselection is a nightmare - not just for the pax, but for callcentre staff too. I have spoken to LAN and QF staff and they all struggle with this - the seatmaps just do not work. Same goes with baggage - depending on what day you travel, sometime they can book my stuff all the way through to Colombia (ie the SCL-BOG leg), other times they can only do it to SCL!! Same planes, same flights.

For internal flights in Colombia the Emerald seat selection works perfectly. For long haul I try and try with online seat selection but at the end of the day changes have popped up. The worst experience was travelling with my family of four, SYD-SCL-BOG, all in J, where you suffer a 12 hr stopover in SCL. Even though we were issued boarding passes in SYD for the SCL-BOG leg, and our baggage was booked all the way through, we discovered upon attempting to board in SCL that our seats had been given away - BECAUSE WE FAILED TO "RE-CHECK-IN" once we arrived in SCL for the transit stop!!

 

[cmon0005]

Maybe a complaint to LAN social media might get them to fix it? or maybe raise it via oneworld social media so they can pass it on?

 

[juddles]

Check out the seat selection available through the QF website for my trip tomorrow in J - it is a QF 747, so this is a LAN codeshare ticket on QF metal. Scary since I know my wife and kids are in row 12

 

[Pat2065]

The seat selection issue was exactly my experience (see link above), but not others. It must be a particular type of booking that causes the problem. Eventually I got my Travel Agent to make the seat selections, which stuck.

Maybe but we've had just about every type - J only, mixed fares, LAN direct and QF bookings and problem persists. Very tiresome. No TA involved. Will go through QF but I think in the past they've also not been able to get the preferential seating done.

 

[opusman]

Maybe but we've had just about every type - J only, mixed fares, LAN direct and QF bookings and problem persists. Very tiresome. No TA involved. Will go through QF but I think in the past they've also not been able to get the preferential seating done.

Yes that is my experience as well. And often if the seat selection does work it doesn't "stick" anyway.

FWIW I've always found that my seats get pre-allocated in the preferential area anyway, so it's never really mattered.

 

[JohnM]

I've never have any problems selecting seats. Every year I do a DONEx booked through QF which almost always includes LA flights. 1A or 1K every time .

I can't recall how I do it, but I know that I get my LA PNR (and I do the same for AA), as I have the QF, LA and AA PNRs written at the top of my flight planner running sheet. Even though both AA and LA seem to use Sabre, each assigns their own PNR to the initial QF Amadeus version.

As I mentioned elsewhere, the only time I couldn't do it was when I chose an AA codeshare on an LA flight in a quest for more points.

 

[Milboo]

Damn you Juddles! How can you see the LAN ticketed flight on QF website!

I am on this flight on Friday and I (and QF) can't even get the QF website to acknowledge I exist even with FF entered on ticket.

 

[Milboo]

I have 5 flights coming up on LAN and through their website I was able to select GYE- LIM, LIM- CUS and return but can't select SCL - GYE or LIM - SCL. No idea why not.