Ticketing for international flights

[chelseabelsea]

Quick question, folks…just made final payment early last week for a November cruise. We selected custom air from US to Europe on a foreign carrier- when should I be able to go into that carrier’s website to select seats? When I entered our booking number, it isn’t recognized yet by the carrier.

 

thank you!

[CardowMD]

I just paid, too for a cruise early November. Tried to look up my seats and discovered the RSSC booking number shown for flight was not the confirmation number that Turkish Air needed. My TA has shown a very different layout for my flight than Seat guru is showing for my wide body 787-9 plane….Someone earlier mentioned RSSC does not actually pay for the ticket until 60 days before flight. Will wait for others to opine and see if that is still correct.

[RELS]

Sixty days is still true, AFAIK. I will often call the airline directly and some of them will give you information you want — confirmation number, airplane type, etc. some will also let you select your seat. 
 

I’ve found Delta and United to be most helpful and American to be more rigid (Swissair was also accommodating). If you don’t get what you want from the first agent, it never hurts to try again with a different person. 

[forgap]

We have an early November flight and we got a locator number and seat assignment when we OK’d the itinerary.  Airlines are British Air and Qatar.  

[shuguley]

12 hours ago, chelseabelsea said:

Quick question, folks…just made final payment early last week for a November cruise. We selected custom air from US to Europe on a foreign carrier- when should I be able to go into that carrier’s website to select seats? When I entered our booking number, it isn’t recognized yet by the carrier.

 

thank you!

I just looked at my Regent air confirmation that was received right after my custom air arrangements were approved.  This confirmation came back in February for flights in September.  At the top of this statement there was a reservation code and below that code was an airline reservation code.  When I used the airline reservation code back in February it worked just fine and has continued to work on the Delta website.  The confirmation from Regent also showed seat assignments.  

Edited July 10 by shuguley

[flossie009]

3 hours ago, CardowMD said:

My TA has shown a very different layout for my flight than Seat guru is showing for my wide body 787-9 plane

Unfortunately SeatGuru is not kept up to date. We find that aeroLOPA is often more accurate for seat layouts.

However in the case of Turkish Airlines 787-9 the two websites seem to agree on the layout.

SeatGuru

aeroLOPA

[cAPS lOCK oN]

2 hours ago, flossie009 said:

Unfortunately SeatGuru is not kept up to date. We find that aeroLOPA is often more accurate for seat layouts.

 

 

This is good advice. Seat Guru had the layouts for our recent flights completely wrong. Aerolopa has it right, so I'm changing my bookmark, Thanks!

[TheShag]

Just gort off the phone with RSSC Air Dept who stated that they have/will be ticketing 90 days out from cruise departure date. I would not 'take this to the bank' as the agent was a little confused on some other points and may be a rookie [kept referring basic things to her supervisor] mistake. 

 

I look forward to others who are getting close to their departure date.

[CardowMD]

@flossie009 thank you for alternate link..I have never heard of Aerolopa.  rSSC and Turkish agent, when I called , had this wacky layout. They were showing a narrow body as the 787-9…. I will check back in September . At least I now have a single window seat.

[mj_holiday]

When our TA books our flights through Regent she always has seat assignment when we review the flights.  Have never had to go back and get seats.

[labonnevie]

For our September Splendor cruise, SAS won’t assign bc seats until 30 hours before departure without an upcharge. Has to be ticketed as well. 
First time we have run into that. 

[jctdlt]

Your TA should be able to get seats.

[Kane]

We have done Regent Air on our two most recent voyages.  They book and assign confirmation numbers up to 270 days prior to voyage on what they refer to as "contract".

 

Legs on domestic airlines (Delta and UA for us) allow mods to seating via account web/apps.  Legs on foreign carriers (e.g. Lufthansa, Canadian, etc.) do not appear to permit self-access seat mods via confirmation codes or apps.  We were able to request seats to Regent Air via TA, which got done.

 

Inconvenient, but seems to work out in the long run.  One just can't change one's mind on a daily basis and get it done.

 

As an aside, we have lot's of loyalty status on Delta & UA and could not beat the Regent Air prices unless we wanted to burn award miles or to "take a chance" on getting an upgrade.

Edited July 12 by Kane

[labonnevie]

7 hours ago, jctdlt said:

Your TA should be able to get seats.

She can. 
I’m just waiting for Regent to ticket so she can tell me what the SAS charge is for seat assignments before the 30 hour point. 

[DaveFr]

50 minutes ago, labonnevie said:

She can. 
I’m just waiting for Regent to ticket so she can tell me what the SAS charge is for seat assignments before the 30 hour point. 

We flew SAS from Barcelona to Copenhagen on April 28 and Copenhagen to Los Angeles on April 29. Regent was able to get seats on both flights and a SAS record locator before the flights were ticketed at the 60 day mark. I checked the reservation on April 26 and the seat assignments for both flights showed up. However, the next day during check-in for the first flight, our seat assignments for the Copenhagen to Los Angeles flight had disappeared. Checking the seat map for the Los Angeles flight showed very few decent seats left. Consequently, I decided to pay to reserve two seats. The aircraft was configured with 1-2-1 configuration. The window seats were $120 per seat and the middle seats were $90 per seat if I remember correctly. Hope this helps.
 

Dave

Edited July 13 by DaveFr

[bohaiboy]

On 7/10/2024 at 7:04 AM, CardowMD said:

I just paid, too for a cruise early November. Tried to look up my seats and discovered the RSSC booking number shown for flight was not the confirmation number that Turkish Air needed. My TA has shown a very different layout for my flight than Seat guru is showing for my wide body 787-9 plane….Someone earlier mentioned RSSC does not actually pay for the ticket until 60 days before flight. Will wait for others to opine and see if that is still correct.

Seat Guru has not been active for years, so their information is not up to date.  Your TA should have the latest configurations .

[Aloha 1]

As others have posted, we booked and chose seats in one call with Regent Air. Received both the R confirmation code and the airline PNR. Actual ticket numbers were not recorded  until 41 days before our flight when R made payment.