Lufthansa

[deec]

Although this is about our up coming River Cruise with Viking, I think this board may be able to answer my question.  We have not flown with United or Lufthansa previously.  We are using Viking Air.  We are ticketed and have assigned seats in economy.  However, when I go to the Lufthansa site it does not appear that we have seats and indeed the seats we are assigned according to Viking are unoccupied.  It says we can "purchase" an assigned seat.

 

Have any of you encountered this?  I have contacted my TA and she will check when she has good internet/cell.  she is currently traveling herself.

[SantaFe1]

10 minutes ago, deec said:

Although this is about our up coming River Cruise with Viking, I think this board may be able to answer my question.  We have not flown with United or Lufthansa previously.  We are using Viking Air.  We are ticketed and have assigned seats in economy.  However, when I go to the Lufthansa site it does not appear that we have seats and indeed the seats we are assigned according to Viking are unoccupied.  It says we can "purchase" an assigned seat.

 

Have any of you encountered this?  I have contacted my TA and she will check when she has good internet/cell.  she is currently traveling herself.

We used Viking Air + and flew Lufthansa and United from Barcelona in March.  We had all our seats assigned, no problem, but we were in business class.  I was worried about going through Frankfurt, as there were strikes, but it was fine.  

[Jjg34219]

Last May we flew Lufthansa Tampa to Frankfurt in Economy using Air Plus and we had seat asignments

i might add we really enjoyed our first experience with them too

Edited July 10, 2023 by Jjg34219

[longterm]

26 minutes ago, deec said:

Although this is about our up coming River Cruise with Viking, I think this board may be able to answer my question.  We have not flown with United or Lufthansa previously.  We are using Viking Air.  We are ticketed and have assigned seats in economy.  However, when I go to the Lufthansa site it does not appear that we have seats and indeed the seats we are assigned according to Viking are unoccupied.  It says we can "purchase" an assigned seat.

 

Have any of you encountered this?  I have contacted my TA and she will check when she has good internet/cell.  she is currently traveling herself.

Went through this  in May on a trip to Italy. I went directly to Lufthansa and got it resolved. 

[OneSixtyToOne]

If a leg of your flight is codeshared with another regional airline, they might require a fee for advanced reservations. We ran into this with our flight from Florence to Munich which was a codeshared Lufthansa flight but was operated by Air Dolomite (or something like that). Many regional carriers and some major carriers will now only issue free economy seats on the day of the flight. 

[SJD117]

Lufthansa requires payment for advance seat assignments, at least until 24 hours before flight departure. That was our experience last year when we booked flights from Seattle to Frankfurt and on to Italy.

Edited July 10, 2023 by SJD117

[deec]

sjd...had the flights been booked by Delta or yourself?

[CDNPolar]

It could be that the seats were booked through United and they don't show on the Lufthansa site.

 

Similar situation recently when I booked for Australia, I booked the flights on the United site, but there was an Air Canada segment.  (Air Canada and United are Star Alliance as are United and Lufthansa). United showed the seats for all segments but Air Canada did not show any seats.

 

If you can actually see the bookings on both airline sites, then I would call each airline.  What ended up happening for me is that I was careful to only book seats on each site for that airlines flight and not the other.  This worked for me.

 

HOWEVER, there is a poster here that is saying that Lufthansa requires payment for seats.  You should take this up with Viking Air.  We have found that sometimes the Viking Air reservationist is not knowledgeable and thinks they have booked your seats when they have not.

[Cienfuegos]

I don't know if it's still the case, but some code-share arrangements used to be bulk sales.  Lufthansa would sell United 50 seats for every Miami-Frankfurt flight in June. United cut LU a check and the seats disappeared from the LU inventory.

 

If the seats didn't sell by two days (etc) from liftoff, they would flow back into LU's inventory. United would pay a penalty, and walk way. Or United would eat the empty seats. A lot of consolidator last minute tickets are created that way.

[Michael50]

Hi, we had the same problem, but once Viking purchased the ticket from Lufthansa I was able to choose our seats directly from the Lufthansa site. I also called Lufthansa and they were very helpful, we’re also in economy, 

[deec]

did you have to pay extra for the seat assignments?  Not much but still an aggravation.

[CILCIANRQTS]

55 minutes ago, Michael50 said:

Hi, we had the same problem, but once Viking purchased the ticket from Lufthansa I was able to choose our seats directly from the Lufthansa site. I also called Lufthansa and they were very helpful, we’re also in economy, 

We’ve had similar codeshare experiences.

First of all, we totally disregard anything on MVJ and go directly to the carrier’s site. Viking does NOT update your original reservation.

Always be sure you’re using the operating carrier’s ticket locator, not the issuing carrier’s.

This is a key “self-help” opportunity area, as the flight airline has always been very accommodating when resolving issues.

[KathyA]

I was shocked to find that when I booked award business class tickets on American, all of the flights were codeshared with BA. And BA required even business class to pay to reserve a seat. Otherwise, take your chances when you check in for the flight. And the fee was not cheap--about $100 per seat going and $180 per seat returning. Outrageous! Still, we paid it and filed it under "in for a dime in for a dollar."

 

[FlyerTalker]

4 hours ago, KathyA said:

I was shocked to find that when I booked award business class tickets on American, all of the flights were codeshared with BA. And BA required even business class to pay to reserve a seat.

 

That has been a fact of life with BA operated flights for decades.  Well publicized - do your research.

 

 

[philw1776]

Just flew BA and did not have to pay to change & reserve a seat. World Traveler Plus.