Selecting Turkish Airlines Seat on Aeroplan Booking

Step by step on how we were able to choose our Turkish Airlines seats for an award flight we booked with Aeroplan.

BOOKING WITH ALLIANCE PARTNERS

I recently booked an award ticket where we are flying on Turkish Airlines, but I booked it via Air Canada.

At the time of booking Chase had a 20% transfer bonus to Aeroplan (Air Canada) and I was able to transfer points for our 3 tickets with no issues to Aeroplan. I did call first to confirm this was actual availability and not phantom (out of paranoia).

After booking I received an email with 2 different codes on it.
1 is your Aeroplan confirmation.
1 is your Turkish confirmation (combo of 6 letters/numbers).

SELECTING SEATS ON TURKISH AIRLINES

Of course I wanted to select our seats asap to ensure we’d be able to sit together. Most places I read said you could simply go to the Turkish Airlines site or app, go to manage booking, add your Turkish Booking confirmation (also called PNR) and that would bring up your flight.

This unfortunately did not work for me.

EMAIL TURKISH AIRLINES
I had read that a quick way to get in touch with Turkish Airlines is to email them. You’ll want to go to this Turkish Airlines Contact Us page and locate the office you want to contact.

Denver didn’t have an option, so I chose Chicago.
I sent an email giving them my Turkish Airlines Code and requesting specific seats for each person.
I heard back within minutes! MIND BLOWN!

CALL TURKISH AIRLINES
I’d read horror stories about wait times to call Turkish Airlines. But I was shocked when I was speaking to a live agent within minutes. You’ll need to have your Turkish Airlines loyalty number ready to enter at the beginning of the call. From there, it’s easy to get a human. I called 1.800.874.8875.

KNOWING WHICH SEATS TO PICK

Without being able to see exactly which seats are available, there’s a little work around I used. I went to seatmaps.com and input my flight information. If you are still using Seat Guru, try this. You’ll love it. I even prefer it to aerolopa.

I input our flight information and was given this..

Of course from this I didn’t know which seats were actually available. But I sent Turkish Airlines our requested seats for both flights and when one seat was already taken, I simply emailed them back with a 2nd option and that was open.

I’d been dreading trying to contact Turkish Airlines because they’ve had some issues in the past. But the phone agent I spoke to was so helpful and emailing with their Chicago office was a breeze.

I hope if you are trying to select seats this will help you accomplish that quickly 🙂

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