South African Airways will implement a Chargeable Advanced Seat Reservation System on August 27, 2015 for flights departing from August 31, 2015.

  •  All passengers booked in G,W,L ( Saver Fares) for International routes and G,W,L (Saver Fares) and V,T,Q,S,H ( Plus Fares) on Domestic routes, will be required to pay for a seat assignment if booked outside of 24 hours from travel.  All customers still have the option to select their desired seats within 24 hours of travel at no additional cost.
  • All customers booked in any other classes of service for international or domestic travel, will be able to make a seat selection at no cost at the time of booking or any other time, as is currently the case and based on availability.
  • Currently, only agencies on Amadeus (Chargeable Seat Entries attached) are able to perform the Chargeable Advanced Seat Reservation process for their clients via the GDS. SAA is working with all other GDS’s to facilitate this process in the future.
  • All customers will be able to perform seat assignments and pay for those where applicable at flysaa.com, regardless of the GDS that the booking was made on.  Simply click on the “Manage My Booking” tab and retrieve the booking, using the record locator and name.
  • Group customers are not affected by the new system and will still be able to pre-select seats for these classes of service.
  • All customers who are currently booked in the affected booking classes and already have seat assignments, will be able to keep these seat assignments after implementation.
  • Once the system is live, any customer who is booked in the affected booking classes and does not have a seat assignment, will be subject to the charges assigned to that segment
  • Currently, customers booked on any SAA-operated flight but ticketed on another carrier’s ticket stock (Not 083) , will not be able to use this system and will be able to assign a seat only once check-in is open, or within 24 hours of travelling. This functionality will be added as the system is further developed.
  • SA Express and Airlink segments are not affected.
  • Ancillary fees are not commissionable.

SAA chargeable