This is one of the little secrets the airline industry doesn’t want you to know.  If you book your flight and don’t get a seat assignment, you can be bumped out of your flight.  It usually works like this:

You log on to book your flight online, go through the motions, and when time comes to select your seats you get a message saying “you cannot reserve your seats at this time”.  You nevertheless go ahead, proceed to checkout, pay and complete your transaction.

Logic tells you that if you paid for your ticket and the airline took your money, not having a seat assignment at that very moment is not that big a deal, and that you can always get it when you check in for your flight, right?  Wrong.

According to the airline industry’s twisted and self-serving logic, if you don’t bother to get a seat before your flight, they will conveniently assume that you are not traveling, and  proceed to sell your space on the flight to somebody else.  If you show up at the gate the day or your flight without having a seat assigned and the flight is full or oversold (the norm these days) you will be put on stand by.

This is what happened to me yesterday on the first leg of my trip to Hong Kong (from Miami to L.A.).  Fortunately, my frequent flyer status saved the day, as I was placed in the first spot of the waiting list and somebody didn’t show up.

Next time you get the “you cannot reserve your seats at this time” message, make sure you call and harrass the airline until they give you a seat, preferrably days or even weeks before your flight.