Good seats free

tryin

comeandgo wrote: »

I'm feeling rather thick. I have no idea what you mean. "Before you check in start the process of booking a ticket for that flight."
Surely the first thing you have to do is get a ticket ie book a flight before you even think of checking in? And the longer you leave booking a flight, the more expensive it gets? Sorry I'll just take my seat and go.

I meant after you already have a ticket, and your about to check-in. You start booking a second (and third and 4th etc), and during the booking process (before you pay!!) it offers you to choose a seat. Once you have chosen a seat, anyone checking in cannot get that seat, because they are reserving it for you. You do this with all the seats besides the one you want, and then when you check in that is the only seat they have to give you, so you will get it automatically, without paying for it.

The idea is very simple, the question is do you want to put in the time and effort.

Sharon87

Seats are only confirmed if you already have a ticket for the flight, so that won't work. Maybe your friend just got lucky! This is from someone who books flights a lot for work and personal.

And just to confirm I tried that with my current booking on Easyjet and it doesn't work. Not that it matters as I paid for my seat

shaun_from_Africa

Sharon87 wrote: »

Seats are only confirmed if you already have a ticket for the flight,

But what the OP is doing is not confirming the seats, simply getting them held for a short time until their booking process has been completed or expired.

It's a bit like going into a shop to buy something, taking the last item off the shelf and handing it to a member of the sales staff saying that you have a couple more items to get and that you will pay for all of them in one go.
Once you have done that the item isn't available for anyone else to buy but if you then walk out without completing the purchase, the item will then get put back on the shelf.

Shimrod

budgetflyer wrote: »

The pages can synchronise with each other ,so say you have seat 1c open in one window, 25A in another. You click on to book 1c but actually book 25a.
It's only a seat, so no big deal but it can be disastrous if searching multiple dates.

You could avoid this by using two browsers, one with the seat you want to book, and the other to hold all the other unwanted seats.


As others have said, too much of a faff for me though - I don't fly often enough for the seat booking cost to be a concern.

tryin

Shimrod wrote: »

As others have said, too much of a faff for me though - I don't fly often enough for the seat booking cost to be a concern.

It depends which seat you want. The very best seats (front row, with loads of legroom) can cost almost £30 on longer flights.

fifeken

The technique used to work on easyJet, but hasn't for a few years now. It still works on Jet2 and the seats in the dummy booking are held for >15 mins IME. I don't think it ever worked on Ryanair.

It doesn't allow you to get an exit row seat, as if these are the only ones left you'll get a message to check in at the airport and by that time the held seats will be available again.

As Jet2 sit groups together anyway it's of no benefit there.

I used the technique a couple of weeks ago and as a single traveller I got an aisle seat fairly near the front free, whereas auto allocation might have put me one of the middles towards the rear.

So it worked, but would have limited benefits for many.

If the OP could find out where there friend used it, it would help (unless I'm their friend).

tryin

What happens on easyjet? It gives you those seats even though 'someone' is in the middle of booking them?

fifeken

tryin wrote: »

What happens on easyjet? It gives you those seats even though 'someone' is in the middle of booking them?

Yes, they show as available until they're actually bought and paid for IIRC.

If someone had actually been in the course of booking but you just beat them to it, I presume some kind of error would show up to them before their booking was completed.

tryin

I don't remember which airline it was that my friend says he did it with. If it was Jet2, and they don't give you exit row seats, then I have to agree with those who say its just not worth the faff...:(

fifeken

The faff of potentially sitting in between two strangers of unknown size and habits outweighed the faff of doing a dummy booking for me.