LNER: "experiencing some technical issues with our seat maps"

[ejstubbs]

I'm about to book a return trip from Edinburgh to Maidenhead in mid-November. Using LNER's booking engine I'm getting the error "We're sorry, we're experiencing some technical issues with our seat maps. No amendments can be made for this leg of your journey" when I try to select a decent seat on their trains.

From memory, I ran into exactly the same problem the last time I tried to book with them, for a trip to Cambridge back in July.

Is LNER's booking engine just rubbish, or is there a good reason why it won't let me reserve my preferred seat - which is showing as available on the seat map? It seems to me that if they know that their seat maps aren't working, they should say so up front rather than wasting customer's time allowing them to pick a seat which the system can't reserve for them.

(FWIW and if it makes any difference, I'll be travelling on super off-peak tickets.)

 

[Adam Williams]

What is your preferred seat (coach/seat number)? Which exact service are you trying to pick a seat on? What seat were you originally allocated, and at which price point?

 

[Bletchleyite]

Can you book your preferred seat separately on the website, entering any random 5 digit number as the ticket number? This generally avoids quota issues.

 

[Cell2025]

There is usually at least half a coach which appears to be available for reservation but is actually for walk ups.

 

[Wallsendmag]

I'm about to book a return trip from Edinburgh to Maidenhead in mid-November. Using LNER's booking engine I'm getting the error "We're sorry, we're experiencing some technical issues with our seat maps. No amendments can be made for this leg of your journey" when I try to select a decent seat on their trains.

From memory, I ran into exactly the same problem the last time I tried to book with them, for a trip to Cambridge back in July.

Is LNER's booking engine just rubbish, or is there a good reason why it won't let me reserve my preferred seat - which is showing as available on the seat map? It seems to me that if they know that their seat maps aren't working, they should say so up front rather than wasting customer's time allowing them to pick a seat which the system can't reserve for them.

(FWIW and if it makes any difference, I'll be travelling on super off-peak tickets.)

It won't let you change if you have the last ticket in a quota. Altenatively just use the reserve a a seat option after you have your ticket

 

[Bletchleyite]

It won't let you change if you have the last ticket in a quota. Altenatively just use the reserve a a seat option after you have your ticket

Or at any time using a random 5 digit ticket number (though apparently 0 no longer works).

 

[ejstubbs]

What is your preferred seat (coach/seat number)? Which exact service are you trying to pick a seat on? What seat were you originally allocated, and at which price point?

The service is the 06:30 EDI-KGX on 16th November. It allocated me a backward facing aisle seat in coach G. I prefer a forward facing window seat, as near the front of the train as possible. The fare is a standard class super-off peak.

It won't let you change if you have the last ticket in a quota. Altenatively just use the reserve a a seat option after you have your ticket

If it won't let me change the reservation then it shouldn't offer that option in the first place - and it certainly shouldn't tell me that it's "having problems" if it's just applying the rules!

I will have to see if I can reserve a different seat once I have the required booking reference.

 

[Bletchleyite]

I will have to see if I can reserve a different seat once I have the required booking reference.

Again, you don't need it. Just enter a random 5 digit number other than 0.

 

[185143]

The service is the 06:30 EDI-KGX on 16th November. It allocated me a backward facing aisle seat in coach G. I prefer a forward facing window seat, as near the front of the train as possible. The fare is a standard class super-off peak.



If it won't let me change the reservation then it shouldn't offer that option in the first place - and it certainly shouldn't tell me that it's "having problems" if it's just applying the rules!

I will have to see if I can reserve a different seat once I have the required booking reference.

It's punishment for not buying into LNER's scam trial of only retailing Anytime fares for that flow!

 

[Adam Williams]

The service is the 06:30 EDI-KGX on 16th November. It allocated me a backward facing aisle seat in coach G. I prefer a forward facing window seat, as near the front of the train as possible. The fare is a standard class super-off peak.

Which exact seat did you try to pick and receive the error message for? Which exact seat were you allocated initially? Not "a backwards facing aisle seat in coach G" - which one?

These details are important if there's going to be any success in figuring out why it happened. Every seat has an associated inventory class and it's possible the new seat is of a different inventory class than the original one, but I can't check that unless you confirm the actual full details of what happened.

Was the ticket the £104.30 fare?

 

[milooo]

Or at any time using a random 5 digit ticket number (though apparently 0 no longer works).

12345 works if that helps

 

[ejstubbs]

Which exact seat did you try to pick and receive the error message for? Which exact seat were you allocated initially? Not "a backwards facing aisle seat in coach G" - which one?

Sorry, I can't remember exactly which seat it originally allocated. I think it might have been G17. (I'm afraid I abandoned that booking attempt precisely because it wasn't allowing me to select another seat. If I go through the booking process again just now, it allocates me a seat in coach A. Go figure.)

The seat I tried to select was J82. In fact, I've just tried to reserve that same seat using the trick suggested by miloo above and I get the self-same error message.

Was the ticket the £104.30 fare?

It was a super off-peak single with senior railcard priced at £69.45.

Every seat has an associated inventory class and it's possible the new seat is of a different inventory class than the original one, but I can't check that unless you confirm the actual full details of what happened.

I'm afraid I am ignorant of what an "inventory class" might be in this context, but if it means that I couldn't book the seat I wanted because of the type of ticket I had, then surely it shouldn't have shown the seat as being available for me to pick? (And as noted above, the seat reservation system also wouldn't let me select J82 when I gave it booking number "12345", so it couldn't have known what type of ticket I had - although it would let me choose seat G17, the one it had originally offered me with my ticket purchase!)

 

[Bletchleyite]

I'm afraid I am ignorant of what an "inventory class" might be in this context, but if it means that I couldn't book the seat I wanted because of the type of ticket I had, then surely it shouldn't have shown the seat as being available for me to pick? (And as noted above, the seat reservation system also wouldn't let me select J82 when I gave it booking number "12345", so it couldn't have known what type of ticket I had - although it would let me choose seat G17, the one it had originally offered me with my ticket purchase!)

J82 is a priority seat. Is that the one they block out for actual assistance use? TPE for instance block all of them, LNER don't but may block specific ones, particularly as that one is near the middle of the train so would make things easier for the assistance people.

Yes, the software should probably show it as blocked, but seat selection implementations are generally a bit of a bodge.

 

[milooo]

The 0630 is not showning up on my LNER app for some reason on 16/11 when I try to reserve seats

 

[Adam Williams]

There is no such service on the 16th November, it is a Sunday.

 

[milooo]

There is no such service on the 16th November, it is a Sunday.

It is indeed... Has the OP got booked on a non existent train?

 

[Bletchleyite]

I just tried on a random train (one in about 2 hours from Newcastle to Kings Cross) and it indeed appears Coach J, Seats 81 and 82 are blocked from being selected. I would assume, as above, this is so they are kept available for assistance use. Other priority seats are selectable aside from the unreservable block in coach C.

It's a bit rubbish, though, I'd agree, that these aren't just shown as unavailable.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 23 Oct 2025 ==

It is indeed... Has the OP got booked on a non existent train?

No, it just appears to be that that pair of seats is unreservable on all LNER 9 car IETs.

 

[Adam Williams]

It's a bit rubbish, though, I'd agree, that these aren't just shown as unavailable.

They are in a well-written seat picker



Ultimately, it's down to RARS reporting them as (physically) available without considering whether they're available to the user though. If you want that to display as unavailable to the end-user, you sadly have to implement your own logic on top. Is it ideal? Would I have designed it like this? No, absolutely not - but it's one of many problems there are with the reservation system and I suspect is not seen as high priority to sort out by the industry.

But yes, these two seats are both inventory class 2P. Only pax assist are able to reserve them.

 

[ejstubbs]

The 0630 is not showning up on my LNER app for some reason on 16/11 when I try to reserve seats

Apologies, typo: I was trying to book on the 15/11 (16/11 will be the return date).

 

[yorkie]

The service is the 06:30 EDI-KGX on 16th November. It allocated me a backward facing aisle seat in coach G. I prefer a forward facing window seat, as near the front of the train as possible. The fare is a standard class super-off peak.

In future you may wish to consider using the forum's ticketing site.

LNER only offer a seat selector for their own trains anyway; we allow seat selection - where available - on any operator.

Furthermore, it may be cheaper to split, especially on journeys such as Edinburgh (note: EDB not EDI) to Kings Cross; LNER used to identify such splits, but no longer do so as it circumvents their trial of abolishing (Super) Off Peak fares.

Our site doesn't charge a booking fee, so if there is no split to be found, the price will be the same as charged by LNER, so if you don't gain by booking through our site, you at least won't lose out!

If it won't let me change the reservation then it shouldn't offer that option in the first place - and it certainly shouldn't tell me that it's "having problems" if it's just applying the rules!

If it's the last seat in the basket, it may not be practical to prevent the option displaying as it may not be straightforward to do so.

 

[MrJeeves]

It won't let you change if you have the last ticket in a quota. Altenatively just use the reserve a a seat option after you have your ticket

Is it not using RARS2 now? It shouldn't have the same limitation, and should allow changing the seat on a reservation if it's the last fare in the bucket, unless the site itself has old logic in place to prevent this being attempted.

Or unless it's still using rebook/cancel even with RARS2...

 

[D1537]

With the LNER seat picker it will tell you if there are no alternative seats available. It will not in my experience tell you there is an error.

 

[MrJeeves]

Rather straightforward to reproduce the error by trying to reserve J82 on any 9-car Azuma.

I note that the seat map does not denote these as priority seats with a "P" like it does for other seats. Presumably they've misconfigured their seatmap.

We're sorry, we're experiencing some technical issues with our seat maps. No amendments can be made for this leg of your journey.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Rather straightforward to reproduce the error by trying to reserve J82 on any 9-car Azuma.

I note that the seat map does not denote these as priority seats with a "P" like it does for other seats. Presumably they've misconfigured their seatmap.



View attachment 190998

Priority seats can be reserved, just not those ones. It's only TPE who block them all.

 

[YorksLad12]

I booked some tickets yesterday for 14 and 15 November, and it was mostly fine. I'm assuming the eye symbol means limited view, as the seat map is harder to cycle through than the old one (for me, at least) so finding a key isn't obvious. I'm in K82 down, which I guess is the same as J82, but in coach K.

 

[OscarH]

Presumably they've misconfigured their seatmap.

The perils of using an entirely custom map because the data in RARS is so garbage it's basically unusable. If only the association of train operating companies had commissioned a more suitable reservation system

 

[ejstubbs]

With the LNER seat picker it will tell you if there are no alternative seats available. It will not in my experience tell you there is an error.

I think in my case the problem was that there were alternative seats available, but the seat map was also showing as "available" seats which I couldn't actually reserve. Which meant that the only way to find an alternative seat was to try reserving seats shown as "available" until you found one which was preferable to the one it reserved for you automatically and which didn't throw an error when you clicked on the 'save' button, per the sequence below. Which is ridiculously clunky and non-user friendly.

Step 1: Step 2: Step 3: Step 4: Bother, try another one...

I did eventually manage to get it to change my selection to seat H83 which is at least reasonably near the the front of the train cf coach A, is facing the direction of travel, and not on the aisle (to reduce the risk of getting bumped by careless passengers walking through the carriage - and I know it's not got much a view if any, but I don't expect to be gazing out of the window much at 6:30am).