Tag Archives: international travel

Whenever I have flown domestic (including to the USVI), I simply go on-line to make my flight reservation and select my seat. A day or two ahead of time, I go back on-line to the airline’s website and do my on-line check in.

I was going over my Priceline itinerary and noticed that I did not have seats for 5 of the 6 total flights I’ll be making in the next 10 days, so I went on-line to do that. Thus begins the Seat Selection Two Step.

First leg of the flight is ATL to LAX on China Southern Airline operated by Delta; however, Delta has no ticket information, and cannot do seat selection or on-line check in. This was confirmed with a call to a representative who had a less than clear phone voice and had trouble spelling my last name (even after I spelled it out for him).

China Southern Airlines’ (CSN) web check-in asked for my mobile phone number, but it couldn’t be less than 10 digits, so the 7 digits we’re used to in the US didn’t work, and adding the 3 digit international China to USA prefix resulted in the same error message, “Phone number must not be less than 7 digits.” I had to dig down deep into the China Southern website to find a US-based phone number, but did manage to call them in Los Angeles.

After a 15+ minute hold, I was connected to a very friendly, very well-spoken and easily understood representative who politely and apologetically explained that CSN does not allow web check in or pre-flight seat selection on flights outside of China. She did assign the seats for the Guangzhou (CAN) to Yiwu and the return from Yiwu to CAN (one aisle and one window); however, she explained that we are unable to do pre-flight selection for ATL to LAX and LAX to CAN. We have to wait until we are at the airport to select our seats!

Normally this wouldn’t bother me, but the cross-Atlantic flights are 12+hours, and I would like to be able to watch a movie on my laptop, or play games, or listen to my iPod, and I would like to do the best I can to guarantee I have a seat with power available (the 777-200 has that). I am dreading a mad-dash in LAX to the CSN ticketing counter just to make sure I have a seat with power.

Ah, the adventure begins!