Platinum Seating Preference Mishaps

[justinbrett]

I boarded a roughly half full Q400 flight last night, BNE-NTL. As a WP, the system allocated me 2D (exit row window). I checked in 24 hours before via mobile, I thought perhaps they’d blocked out 2C, but no.

It’s really odd, because my profile preference is forward aisle. I don’t think I’ve ever not been allocated an aisle as gold, so I was surprised to get it as WP. What’s worse is I had a seat mate, but only 1A&B and 2C&D were full, the rest of the first half of the cabin was one pax per two seats.

It’s not the end of the world, a short pleasent flight nonetheless helped by a couple of glasses of free wine. I’m just really curious to see why the seating allocation was messed up. This isn’t a rant or a whinge, but does anyone know what’s happening here?

 

[GoldCanyon340]

Your seat mate could have been a staff member on standby.

 

[JohnK]

I have also had that in the past. Sometimes with a "forward" aisle request I've been allocated a window as all "forward" aisles were already taken.

 

[RichardMEL]

Also with Dash8's there's the weight and balance thing, and with a non full a/c they do tend to distribute pax more specifically than onb larger aircraft.

 

[Stevo.1702]

I've done 26 flights this year on the Dash 8's and 90% of the time I have been assigned 2D. 10% of the time assigned something further back. 0% of the time assigned 1B.

My preference is forward isle. I just accept it now and most of the time I succeed in swapping to the vacant 1B.

I have 1 more Q400 flight this year and I'm pretty certain I know how it will go.

 

[justinbrett]

I've done 26 flights this year on the Dash 8's and 90% of the time I have been assigned 2D. 10% of the time assigned something further back. 0% of the time assigned 1B.

My preference is forward isle. I just accept it now and most of the time I succeed in swapping to the vacant 1B.

I have 1 more Q400 flight this year and I'm pretty certain I know how it will go.

I thought this might be the case - sounds like there is a bug in the seating allocation for Q400. This never happened when I was gold. I always got row 3 or 4 aisle. Sounds like it’s honoring the “forward” part at the expense of the “aisle” part.

 

[Stevo.1702]

Just thought I'd report back.

My last Dash 8 of 2018. Upon check-in via the app I was assigned 2D. I then selected the available 1B.

Don't know why but it just seems to be the way that seating work for the QL props