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A few weeks ago, I wrote about our family’s trip to Seattle.  We’re heading out there on an Amtrak train (thanks to the $1100 in vouchers I got from complaining about our LAST trip) and then flying back one way from Seattle to Cincinnati.  Amazingly, for all the crap that the travel hacking community gives them, DELTA had the best availability back – there were MULTIPLE flights on the day we needed that had EIGHT saver seats available

(SEE ALSO: Why is American award availability so awful?)

(SEE ALSO: Ugh – United Award ticket availability seems just as bad!)

Delta Airlines seat assignments are tough for a family - but they're even tougher when Delta changes them on you!  Here are travel tips to get seated together on trips

Enter… the SCHEDULE CHANGE

Then last week I got an email from Delta, letting me know that my flight had a schedule change.

delta-schedule-change-seattle

Normally I don’t mind schedule changes as they can often open up better flights – that’s how I got 16 extra hours in Rome (for free!)

As you can see, it didn’t change things by much – only a few minutes on our SEA-SLC flight, which actually gives us a bit more time to connect in SLC (it’s going to be a tight run!).  But what interested me was the link to “Choose Seat” for my SLC-CVG leg.

Wait?  Where did my seats go?

Picking seats for a family of eight is a bit of an …. adventure.  Poor seat selection led to an on-plane argument with another passenger which culminated in her telling my wife and I that we were “the type of people that shouldn’t have children” (direct quote)

So hoping to not repeat that, we actually sat down and picked out our seats for our 2 upcoming flights.  (Well, how would YOU arrange 6 kids on a plane?)This was the configuration that we ended up with

delta-seating-chart

The idea was an adult in 13C and 13D that can wrangle the 2 kids in their own row PLUS the extra kid in the row in front of them.  You can see that this pic is the SLC-CVG flight as we’re in rows 13-14, as opposed to rows 21-22 on the SEA-SLC flight (pictured above)

But NOW, when I logged in, I saw us arranged like this

delta-split-up-my-family

Umm…. that is not going to work!  Actually that wouldn’t be HORRIBLE but certainly not ideal!  I’m not sure what happened there – perhaps something to do with the schedule change resetting everyone’s seats?  I know Delta (and other airlines) like to charge you to pick your seats or to select “good” seats, but I already had seats picked out!

(SEE ALSO: Should airlines be regulated to ensure parents sit with children?)

(SEE ALSO: Why yes, I WOULD like to pay $15 for the seat right next to me)

I am hopeful that I can get someone at Delta to fix this for me, but in the meantime I did end up configuring things slightly differently as a worst-case scenario

delta-split-up-my-family-2

Anyone have any tips for me on how to get this fixed?  Will Delta reservations be able to open up seats like this, or are the “dark” seats already taken by other passengers?


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