Aer Lingus Online check in seat selection

BA but green.

The exact same happened to me. Flew out last Sunday, was able to select seat. Flying home tonight, tried to check in online last night and couldn't select a seat without paying. Had to tick a box to automatically assign me a random seat that I didn't know which one it was until I clicked to create the boarding pass. I wonder is it the same on the website? I didn't think to try that instead.

If this is a new blanket change it is really ****

To be honest, as the “free” seats historically where in the back 1/3 of the aircraft I’ve typically ticked “sit me anywhere” and usually ended up somewhere before the wing.

They seem to be pretty good at convincing people to check in well in advance where you always had to pay for a seat so this tends to use up the cheaper seats leaving you with the more expensive options (except front row, exit row etc) empty.

This is really crap. I travel once a month for work and I'm damned if I'm going to pay out of my own pocket for a seat. You can bet my employer won't either, so looks like I will be confined to the middle seat hell gamble every time. Very disappointed in Aer Lingus.

If you have status you will not be allocated a middle seat ex Dublin if you know how this works

Not on EI sadly….

Kiosks in DUB no longer print boarding passes, they turned it off to increase capacity for people checking in bags (they were having problems with large volume of passengers due to the free 10kg bag EI provide)