Call this number

So you’ve racked up enough points for a sweet redemption. Maybe you transferred some Ultimate Rewards points over to United and booked a Thai Airways A380 from Frankfurt to Bangkok in their Royal First suites, but you don’t want to be stuck near the galley? I feel your pain. The unfortunate thing is that United will automatically book you into a seat with no way to change it online via United.com. Now it’s common not to be able to do that, and when that happens you just call United and get the PNR used with the booked airline. Not so with Thai…

I called the Global Services line fully expecting to get my Thai PNR, but they have no way of retrieving it. Period. Nada. So I asked the GS agent to play a little “reissue roulette” to get me in the seat I wanted (2A or 2K). A few tries at that and no luck, so she gives me the Thai Airways phone number: 1-800-426-5204. I simply called this number, explained the situation, and they both helped me select my seat AND gave me my Thai PNR so that I could go online and verify the selection:

Once you’ve entered your PNR and name you’ll end up here:

Click on the “Modify” button and you’ll get to another screen that looks like this:

Click on “select seats” and you’ll finally be to the seat selection page. Yay! Be sure to click the “upper deck” radio button to view the first class cabin, otherwise all you’ll see is grey.

So there you have it – a reasonably easy way to ensure you don’t get stuck in a crappy seat when you book an award ticket on Thai Airways through United. And now you don’t have to waste a call to United, just call Thai directly at 1-800-426-5204.