Qantas-Couples not guaranteed seats together

[equus]

Why would the system allow a situation where pax on a single PNR are split involuntarily?

See what happens when you have 2 pax on a PNR both with "window" selected as their seating preference Ju their FF profile. What do you think the system is going to do? Would you suggest this would be self inflicted, or involuntary? What about both selecting Aisle?

Then think about more than 2 pax. Simply stating that they should be seated together doesn't consider everything.

The only way to even try to ensure this is to do your own pre-allocation. That said, the system does do pretty well (as long as you don't make the decisions too hard for it).

An example which I have seen working well. 2 pax on a booking, one with QF status allowing seat selection, and one slipped back to NB. Select seat for the pax eligible, picking a seat with an empty one adjacent, and EF seat map shows a shadow showing up next to pax (and was not WP so no expectation of shadow). Online checkin at T-24 and confirm what was suspected - the "shadow" is actually the other pax on the PNR being moved along by the system when the selection was done.

 

[Mattg]

About a month ago I checked in online for a AKL-SYD flight. There were three of us, two on one ticket and one on a separate ticket. I selected a window and middle seat together for two of us (with the expectation of selecting the aisle seat for the third passenger) but once I selected these seats the system automatically blocked the aisle seat so I had to put the third passenger somewhere else.

On getting to the airport, I asked the check-in agent to move the passenger into the aisle seat next to us (which was OK as it was just blocked) but he couldn't do it himself; he had to get someone else, I think she was a "load manager" or something like that, to do it.

This is similar to the OP and I suspect that this is why the person in DXB had to call over someone else.