冰吨吨 used Air France–KLM Flying Blue miles (detailed intro on the blog) to book Vancouver–Taipei Taoyuan–Shanghai Pudong. The first leg is China Airlines (CI); the second is China Eastern (MU). Advance seat selection was a struggle. After some searching, seats were selected on both China Airlines and China Eastern. The steps are recorded here.

The problem

Once the ticket is issued, you can see the itinerary in the Air France app, but there is no seat-selection option.

On the China Airlines website, entering the e-ticket number finds nothing. In the China Airlines app you can see the itinerary by e-ticket number, but tapping seat selection throws an error.

  1. Either call China Airlines and have them pick seats for you

  2. Or follow the steps below and choose seats on the Czech Airlines website.

Seat-selection steps

1️⃣ Open the Czech Airlines site https://www.csa.cz/cz-en/my-bookings/. Set the language to English. Enter the last name and the Flying Blue confirmation code

2️⃣ After the itinerary appears, choose Additional services in the drop-down

3️⃣ Click Choose your favourite seat

4️⃣ The seat map does not show which seats are already taken. You have two options: 1) look the flight up on ExpertFlyer to see occupied seats — that result is usually accurate (details at the end of this post); 2) trial and error: pick a seat, confirm, and if you see the error in step 5, repeat step 4 until it works.

I think trial and error is fine. It is quick

5️⃣ If the seat is unavailable, you get the error in the red box below. If it is free, you get what the green arrow points to: seat selected

When you hit a seat-selection error, click Ignore changes as the blue arrow shows, then repeat step 4 and pick again

6️⃣ After a successful selection, the page shows BOOKING CONFIRMED

7️⃣ Within a minute, a China Airlines email arrives, and the itinerary in the China Airlines app also shows the seat. It was blank before

The Air France app itinerary also shows seats, including the first-leg China Airlines flight and the second-leg China Eastern flight.

Tools that help with seat selection

1️⃣ ExpertFlyer

A free account is enough. Enter the date, flight number, and so on, and you can see which seats are taken. That is usually accurate.

2️⃣ Aircraft seat maps at https://www.aerolopa.com/

Thanks to group member Luca YUL for sharing this site!

You can check the operating aircraft type on the itinerary, or on the seat map in step 4, then look up how that type’s business seats are laid out on the site above

Keywords: Air France, KLM, Flying Blue, China Airlines, China Eastern Airlines, award redemptions, award seat selection, China Airlines seat selection, Czech Airlines