QF took our selected seats

[Ausbt]

It pays to regularly check seating allocation when flying on a 747.

Does it ever. I had almost the identical experience to the OP. Booked J 11 months out SYD-NRT 747 (Skybed Mk1) and selected 16J & K (I think exit rows upper deck). I checked those seats every month until that flight. They changed the aircraft twice - once to the Skybed Mk2 and then back to Mark 1 again. Regardless of the fact I dutifully kept reselecting seats and had actually checked them day of departure again, when we arrived at the airport I was in something like 23-whatever and my wife wasn't allocated at all. Naturally I stated my case with some conviction and we ended up in Row 3 old F seats which were great actually. I've never been pushed out of a seat to a lesser seat with VA, but that's not to say it won't happen, it's just reality.

 

[JohnK]

Hope there is a simple explanation. Seating changes without notification are not desirable and obviously the airlines don't think this is important enough as they already have your money and you are not likely to go anywhere. Just complain.

After all 75E in economy is the same seat as 40H. Right?

The check-in agent would have no idea why the seat allocations were changed.

I thought there was a log record with each seating change. I know I have seen the reaction of the lounge staff checking why my seat was changed but they would not tell me why.

 

[ozbeachbabe]

I thought there was a log record with each seating change. I know I have seen the reaction of the lounge staff checking why my seat was changed but they would not tell me why.

If the seat doesn't exist then it's no use demanding your seat back. A better idea instead would be to only select a seat at the time of booking that is common to both 744 configs, assuming the pax knows there is more than one config. The OP did everything they could with regard to checking seating via MMB however as it was obviously a late change that info was not updated in res hence they were unaware of the changes.

Any seat changes done in the res system would have the history of what seats have been selected when and by whom. Similarly any seat changes done within Altea will also show the history of changes that have happened via the checkin system.

When John Phelan said the checkin person wouldn't know why the change had happened however it wouldn't be hard to work out because once they looked at either the Altea history if the change was made close to departure or from the Amadeus res pnr history if the change happened prior to T-80.