Getting 2 seats (award) when only 1 is available

[Eli]

So there is a flight from ORD-YYZ that I'd like to take and right now I'm confirmed on a 2pm flight. There is a 6:30pm and a 9pm and they each have one seat but I need 2. I could technically split the res and then day of figure it out but I don't want to do that. Some people have mentioned that when the one seat gets taken they will open another seat but I don't think on a route like this that will be true.

Thoughts?

[shmiel]

I don't have experience with this for award tickets but trying to do the final click from 2 different browsers at the same time may force them to honor it. I've done this with paid bookings and it worked for me...

[gdam]

I don't have experience with this for award tickets but trying to do the final click from 2 different browsers at the same time may force them to honor it. I've done this with paid bookings and it worked for me...

I tried the same, but it did not work for me with award bookings.

[Dan]

I tried the same, but it did not work for me with award bookings.

+1
That trick seems to work much better with paid tickets than award tickets for some reason.

I've never had an airline open up a 2nd seat on a flight, but some people say that some airlines do just that automatically.

[kivabb]

I was looking for 8 seats from JFK to LAX on BA site to get AA flights. I did 4 seats in Firefox under my account and 4 seats unders my wifes account with IE and it gave us each 4 seats (which weren't available when we searched for even 6 under one account). I did everything but purchase, but it allowed to put in names of passengers, payment info......

Dan, are you saying that when I hit the final confirm on this award ticket, one of those 2 browsers will give me an error? At that point my goose would be cooked because I would be locked in with 4 and up the creek with the other 4.

[Eli]

I just tried this last night on a paid res through cheaptickets. 1 seat left, did it from 2 browsers. Clicked through at the same time, one came back booked and the other came back cooked! Had to pay for the next highest fare for the 2nd pax.

[SuperFlyer]

I'd put them on hold on CO, and keep on checking if something else opens up.

[chuchem]

Its very simple
The Airline has 4 seats in business available. Until its booked anyone can see them. You are only booking it, if you click that last button. If you have 5 windows with 4 seats open, that does not mean you can book 20 seats!
After hitting the button, during the seconds you are waiting to get the conf. the computer books these seats. If in the meantime these seats are not there, you will get a message, that the seats are not there anymore. Your chances of success are very small. It must really try to book it in the same split second, with internet connections and diffrent browsers, the chance of this happening is close to zero.

[Dan]

Its very simple
The Airline has 4 seats in business available. Until its booked anyone can see them. You are only booking it, if you click that last button. If you have 5 windows with 4 seats open, that does not mean you can book 20 seats!
After hitting the button, during the seconds you are waiting to get the conf. the computer books these seats. If in the meantime these seats are not there, you will get a message, that the seats are not there anymore. Your chances of success are very small. It must really try to book it in the same split second, with internet connections and diffrent browsers, the chance of this happening is close to zero.

It works on CO.com for revenue tickets.

[SuperFlyer]

I think that, on paid tix, which is way more popular, co might have more then one server dealing with the reserving/issuing of tickets, and they synchronize, say every 3 seconds.
Awards, that happen way less, can be handled by 1 server, so there is no time at which he is not up to date.
 

[Eli]

Most likely award tix will never work. I'm sure they all contact one central server.

[shmiel]

I just tried this last night on a paid res through cheaptickets. 1 seat left, did it from 2 browsers. Clicked through at the same time, one came back booked and the other came back cooked! Had to pay for the next highest fare for the 2nd pax.

When I did the 2 different browser trick, I also used 2 different websites (eg. orbitz+expedia) and it worked. I guess it won't help for this time ...