Turkish Airlines - Seat selection

[HSB44]

Does anyone have experience successfully selecting a bunch of economy seats together at check in?

Or managing to get through to customer service ahead of flight to successfully request seats to be moved together?

This is my first time flying them. We are split up as a family, and we are travelling with young kids 30+ hours so it will be really challenging to be split up. They have deliberately split us up - I cant explain why, other than to assume it's a cynical revenue generating tactic. $109 per person per leg (over 3 legs each way) just to select seats is pretty steep for what is supposed to be a full service carrier.

I've tried to contact them to make a request, but not luck with a response yet.
Im a bit pessimistic about our chances to snag 4 seats together at check in. I no longer have any star alliance status (other than Aeroplan 25k).

I assume there is no way to buy seats with points...

Any advice or experience?

 

[MEL_Traveller]

Does anyone have experience successfully selecting a bunch of economy seats together at check in?

Or managing to get through to customer service ahead of flight to successfully request seats to be moved together?

This is my first time flying them. We are split up as a family, and we are travelling with young kids 30+ hours so it will be really challenging to be split up. They have deliberately split us up - I cant explain why, other than to assume it's a cynical revenue generating tactic. $109 per person per leg (over 3 legs each way) just to select seats is pretty steep for what is supposed to be a full service carrier.

I've tried to contact them to make a request, but not luck with a response yet.
Im a bit pessimistic about our chances to snag 4 seats together at check in. I no longer have any star alliance status (other than Aeroplan 25k).

I assume there is no way to buy seats with points...

Any advice or experience?

Looking around it seems you are not alone. Plenty of reddit posts where families have initially been split by the advance seat selection on Turkish.

Advice seems to be that Turkish will ensure each child is sat with an adult. But you might not all be together.

In many cases this has been resolved at the airport, at the check-in counter (if you can’t do it before during online check-in). Get to the airport early seems to be the advice. Or pay

 

[HSB44]

Yes sadly there doesn't seem to be any workaround

 

[HSB44]

In the end we couldn't resolve it pre flight.
They just don't budge - it's all about revenue raising.
The 'seat randomiser' doesn't work - it's not like you can keep spinning the wheel until you land with the seats your are happiest with. We just got stuck with bad seats.

Be aware they will try to placate you by pretending that you will be able to have free seat selection 24 hours before take off (you can't - unless you have appropriate miles & smiles status).

Then they will advise you to check in and then book free seats six hours before flight - but then the system won't let you change seats once you have checked in, so you won't be able to check.

The irony is that the customer service burden then just falls on the staff at check-in, gate and cabin crew - because they get bombarded with requests to move seats for free.

In the end, we were able to complain so much at the check in counter that I guess they had flagged us as grumpy customers, and by the time we got to the gate the professional manager had reallocated us decent seats together.


It's worth noting that on our first leg (MEL-SIN) there were empty seats and people stretched out. The flight filled up at Singapore, but I think the booking system can only allocate you the same seat for the full two legs to Istanbul ( hence the empty seats first leg)

 

[MEL_Traveller]

In the end we couldn't resolve it pre flight.
They just don't budge - it's all about revenue raising.
The 'seat randomiser' doesn't work - it's not like you can keep spinning the wheel until you land with the seats your are happiest with. We just got stuck with bad seats.

Be aware they will try to placate you by pretending that you will be able to have free seat selection 24 hours before take off (you can't - unless you have appropriate miles & smiles status).

Then they will advise you to check in and then book free seats six hours before flight - but then the system won't let you change seats once you have checked in, so you won't be able to check.

The irony is that the customer service burden then just falls on the staff at check-in, gate and cabin crew - because they get bombarded with requests to move seats for free.

In the end, we were able to complain so much at the check in counter that I guess they had flagged us as grumpy customers, and by the time we got to the gate the professional manager had reallocated us decent seats together.


It's worth noting that on our first leg (MEL-SIN) there were empty seats and people stretched out. The flight filled up at Singapore, but I think the booking system can only allocate you the same seat for the full two legs to Istanbul ( hence the empty seats first leg)

But did they assign at least one adult with each child as part of the random process? Or were the children separated from the adults?