United Airlines Eliminates Generic Seat Requests Across All Booking Channels

United Airlines is quietly shutting down a long-standing workflow for travel agencies.

Effective at the end of July, advisors can no longer enter blanket, unassigned seat preferences (like requesting “any aisle” or “any window”) during the booking process. Every seat request must now carry a specific seat number, or the system will reject it automatically.

That means that any generic seat request submitted through agency GDS, EDIFACT, NDC, or interline partner channels will now return a UC / unable status code.

Advisors will instead have to go through a Book > Ticket > Assign Seat workflow. And, because modern seat eligibility, fee waivers, and status-based seat perks are tied to specific ticket data, systems will evaluate seat availability only after a ticket is issued.

The new rule, which rolled out at the end of July, is particularly important to advisors who rely on automated GDS scripts or mid-office tools that auto-fill generic seat preferences. Anyone with those scripts will face booking errors unless they update their processes to select exact seats post-ticketing.