Code Share Sucks!!! I keep spinning my wheels!!

This is absolutely ridiculous!!  I have a party of six confirmed on Iberia Airlines going to Spain for December of 2007, however it was reserved as an American Airlines flight, back in May of 2007, knowingly as a codeshare.   So, generally speaking, other airlines, such as Northwest, are able to pull up and pre-assign seats for me if their flight is reserved through Continental as a "CO" flight, so I assumed {I know, I know, one must never assume!!  LOL} that because the flight is actually "operated by Iberia" that Iberia should be able to do the same thing, ie: pre-assign a seat or reconfirm that a seating assignment has been made.  I originally had awesome seating assignments for these folks, but there has since been a schedule change and now I just want to make sure they still have the same seating assignments.  Simple task, or so I thought.

 

Sooooo, I call Iberia and she tells me that she's able to view the reservation using the American Airlines record locator because American "owns the space".  I'm like......OK.....so, what do you show for seating assignments and she couldn't tell me, meaning she wasn't able to view what the Iberia passengers were holding because it was booked and ticketed as an AA flight!!  I said, "well, why can't you just display the PNR under Iberia's actual assigned flight number and view the reservation that way?"  She said that Iberia doesn't receive the actual reservation until the day of departure!!  I'm like......WHAT???  It's actually operated by Iberia and YOU CAN'T verify the reservation or help with seating assignments??  Ah geez!!  She said I'd have to call American!!  I call American and she tells me that she could re-request the seats for me, but it would cost 15.00 per passenger to request seats!!  WHAT??? I already had seats and now American tells me they no longer have seats, even though I truly believe they do, but Iberia can't tell me because supposedly, they can't view the reservation just yet!!  This is sooooo ridiculous!!  See below for more on this issue.

 

OK, I'm calling Iberia back now and I'm just going to give her the Iberia flight number and see if they're magically able to display the reservation.  I'm going to play dumb and tell them my computer is down, but that I do have the flight number and date.  All the other airlines are able to display a passenger reservation this way, let's see if good ole Iberia has that capability.  They're not even from India!!  UGH!!  At this point, I almost think they might as well outsource their calls too!!   This is really a bunch of crap!!  The fellow at Iberia still was not able to view the reservation, because American has control.  American charges 15.00 for pre-assigned seats, per passenger, even though I already had them done and now, even though their was a schedule change, American says tough patooty!!  They don't care!!  And I am pissed!!  This is a bunch of crap.  I can't even request a seating assignment now and according to AA their seats are gone, even though I believe that their seats are pre-assigned, but AA can't see them and Iberia can't pull up the damn reservation!!  OK, I don't swear too much, but when I'm ticked off.....all bets are off  :-)

 

OK, so I insisted on a supervisor at American and the agent said, she'll be happy to get me a supervisor, but they would tell her the same thing.  I said, as long as you don't ship me off to another country.  She laughed!!  After speaking with the supervisor about the fact that, I already had seats pre-assigned and since the schedule change, which was NOT the traveller's fault, the pre-assigned seats were no longer verifiable and it appeared that they no longer had seats pre-assigned, but again, was NOT the traveller's fault that their seats had been booted out due to the schedule change and that I could clearly see that there were lots of pre-assignable seats for this trip in December of 2007 (many months from today's writing). I told the agent, this is simply a twisted case of a Rule 240, where as the airline just needs to fix it, free of charge, due to a schedule change.  The American Airlines reservation agent agreed, only after the supervisor told her she could request the seats and waive the fee.  God forbid if they agree with a travel agent, even though many of them secretly are on our side, but because they are all monitored by the higher ups, they don't dare to agree.  It's their paycheck and I totally understand.  UGH!!  It's like pulling teeth sometimes and the agent suggested that I check back in one hour to make sure the seats were pre-assigned.  (I did check back in one hour, 2 hours, 3 hours and it still wasn't done.) I asked her to document the reservation which she did, so that I don't have to go through the same ringer again.  She and I both agreed that these fees are ridiculous and that the boys setting at the top of these corporations are simply getting their pockets padded at the little guys expense.  We peons are the ones doing all the work and they're collecting the fat checks!!  It's sickening.  OK  Rant over for the moment!!

 

Today, August 10, 2007 is a new day and the saga continues.  I display the seat chart to see if there has been any action on the reservation and see that on both segments, the seats have been changed, when I only wanted to pre-assign the return, they mucked up the outbound ones.  Fortunately, I'm pretty sure the client will be accepting to what we have as it's the same configuration, same side of the plane and only a couple of rows back, but still all together.  Remember, we're talking a family of six who are taking a big international family vacation together.  After speaking with the last gal at American yesterday, I'm inclined to believe that she was NOT the idiot who made that blunder, she was way too helpful and I also got some stupid message back from the American yesterday in the OSI that says: OSIYY TRAVEL AGENCY CANNOT REFUND NON-REFUNDABLE FARES.  OK, and there point is?  I wasn't trying to refund these tickets, I just want my seats back!!!  Code shares suck!!  Did I mention that code share sucks!!  I can clearly tell that they had the same seats all along, now that they've been changed, but NO ONE, not American nor Iberia was able to tell me what seats these passengers had!!  This should be such a simple task!!  These computers can not talk to each other properly and all they do is spin me up (see rant above).  I'm much calmer today and all I can do is shake my head!!  Airlines!!  UGH!!  Maybe it was those two margaritas I had the pleasure of divulging in last night that calmed my nerves on this one.  Thank you Whipkey!!!

 

My thoughts/opinions as to why these airlines aren't able to actually view something which is booked on them......

American is most likely floating the money, that's why Iberia doesn't have the reservations yet.  After reading some comments about Expedia and how they don't pay the vendors until after the travel has been complete, it really is starting to all make sense now.  Ka-chink, ka-chink, ka-chink on the $3749.28.  Can you say earning interest!!  Meanwhile, the rich keep getting richer!!  Grrrr