British Airways limits advance seat selection even further
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British Airways is making it tougher to pick your seat in advance, if you’re not a loyal or high-paying customer. The airline already has a longstanding reputation for limiting the number of seats that can be reserved at the time of booking. That reputation is about to get worse:
To make more seats available at the time of check-in we are reducing the number of seats that can be pre-assigned. This option will be limited to specific groups of travelers. These include families with young children; First class fliers; Premier, Gold, and Silver Executive Club members; and those holding fully flexible tickets across all cabins. […] Corporate customers holding a contract with British Airways will also be able to select seats at the time of booking.
The airline is portraying the change as a customer-friendly change, as they are increasing the availability of seat selection at the time of online check-in. The plan is supposedly “designed to simplify the process of choosing a seat and give all customers more transparency and control of the seating options available on their flight.”
Reducing choices is certainly “simplification,” but not in a good way.
I suppose the new scheme, by allowing more online check-in, is better than waiting to receive a seat assignment at the airport. But in reality, this means that you’re still at the mercy of the seating supply in the 24 hours before your flight. Thumbs down.
Thanks, Matt!
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November 30th, 2006 at 5:09 pm |
In the last dozen trips through LHR on BA I have been unable to reserve my business class seat in advance.
This is one of the few flaws in BA’ business class service, IMHO.
-TF
November 30th, 2006 at 7:28 pm |
That’s ridiculous. BA claims to be offering a premium product, and part of that means offering the clientele the choice of seat.
TierFlyer: Your comment makes it even seem crazier. I guess you’re not buying the top-dollar tickets, but if you’re in business you should get a seat, period. Maybe they don’t want people reserving all the forward facing seats?
December 1st, 2006 at 8:16 am |
I’m buying $7K r/t tickets to Bangalore in business - hard to imagine that anyone is paying more than that.
The on-ground people are always very nice and they ladies at the Upper Tier club are wonderful about trying to get me next to my co-workers, but not being able to arrange adjacent seats with a co-worker for a 10 hour flight just seems, well, stupid.
-TF
December 1st, 2006 at 5:39 pm |
A $7000 business class seat SHOULD warrant a seat reservation. Period. End of story.
BA’s rules, quoted above, bizarrely discriminate against business class… first class gets a seat (seemingly in any class) while business and coach depend on the booking class or status. Specifically “fully flexible” tickets get a seat reservation. And that means…
“Fully flexible tickets are those booked in F (First); J, C (Club World); W (World Traveller Plus); and Y (World Traveller).”
December 1st, 2006 at 9:11 pm |
Vigorous debate on this on the BA Board on FlyerTalk, but this will put BA at an even bigger disadvantage to AA’s FF programme.
I think AA has seat assignement nailed. Anyone can assign seats priot to ticketing, but only elite Frequent Flyers get the pick of the best seats at the time of ticketing. Simply, easy, and effectively meets customer expectations.
I was beginning to use BA more and more (I like the WT+ seats), but the difficulty in getting and maintaining frequent flyer status (compared to AA) and now this seat assignement nonsense…. hallo again AA !
February 8th, 2007 at 2:06 pm |
[…] British Airways is seemingly doing everything it can to tarnish its own image in the eyes of consumers. They won’t let you make seating reservations unless you’re on a full-fare ticket — even discounted business class travelers can’t get a seat assignment. They jerked their customers around during the recently threatened strike — flights are on! cancelled! back on! — throwing thousands of travel plans into disarray. And now this. At this rate, upright “seating” may soon be a reality after all. […]
March 4th, 2007 at 5:52 am |
BA has dropped to the bottom of my list. I just spent hours (well 90+ minutes) on hold with them to try to get seats for my young daughter and elderly parents–yes I waited until 24 hours like they told me to. but now they tell me that seats will only be available at the airport. This is the last time I willingly fly BA.
March 8th, 2007 at 7:29 pm |
We booked our business class travel reservations with BA 9 months in advance to make sure we could go on what for us is the trip of a lifetime, yet we won’t know until 24 hours ahead of time whether or not we have a seat. This is incredibly enfuriating. We are at the mercy of a lottery and have to hope that “more important” travelers don’t fill up the cabin before we can even try for a seat.
July 15th, 2007 at 12:42 am |
I also had this experience: waited until 24 hrs before the flight, then was unable to pick a seat (website wouldn’t let me). I’ll never again fly BA if I can help it.
July 17th, 2007 at 1:55 am |
My wife travels Vigin Atlantic Business Class and selects her seat at time of booking. I have to wait until 24 hrs before departure for my BA business class seat selection
My wife is a Silver Card holder on Virgin Atlantic after flying 35,000 miles, I am still a Blue card holder on BA after flying 50,000 miles
Something wrong somewhere
July 31st, 2007 at 11:41 am |
[…] Setting aside the culture clash: None of this would have happened if British Airways would actually allow advance seat assignments for passengers on fares lower than the most expensive tickets. (Given their seating concerns, I […]
November 11th, 2007 at 10:23 am |
I would love to applaud BA for a wonderful job they have done in stopping on-line seat reservation. This is splendid because people book seats on-line and later cancel. To the disadvantage of poeple like myself this has helped us alot. To you who are moaning, please wake up. it is fair to us all to be allocated seats at the airport when we are all vissible to the BA checkpoints. stop this nonsense of trying to be smart by uttering bullshit on-line about BA. I use BA for bussiness abroad and find this very comforting.therefore, if you guys feel you dont want to use BA. good-luck to you because BA will still be full in all its flights without you people.Bye
November 12th, 2007 at 9:31 am |
Honestly, Lebza, your argument doesn’t make any sense.
You say the problem is “people book seats on-line and later cancel” — but most of the people who tried to get a seat reservation were on non-refundable fares. The only seats that CAN book seats on British Airways nowadays are the fully-refundable and readily-cancellable fares at the top tier of each booking class.
In other words, the people who are most likely to cancel their flights are the only ones who get to choose their seats. How does this help anyone?
Glad BA works out for you, though.
November 25th, 2007 at 1:42 am |
An interesting discussion which has proved quite useful for me. I do not enjoy flying, and I was just researching various flight options for Vancouver to Paris. I was looking at converting Avion points to BA points so I could then use the BA points to upgrade my seats to World Traveller plus. Without advance seat seletion, all these other research options are useless. I have no intention of spending $2400 and then using 50000 points for an upgrade to get WT+, without knowing what seats I am going to end up with next April, or whether I get to sit with my wife. I will go with Lufthansa or Air Canada or somebody else that allows me to select a seat. Thanks to this post, and idiotic management at British Airways, they have just cost themselves a sale.
January 3rd, 2008 at 12:27 pm |
I booked business class award travel through AA on BA for me and my wife. For some reasons the agent put our tickets on different records. Since I have Platinum status on AA they would let me reserve my seat, but not for my wife because she is on a separate records. Calling BA did not do any good. If I had any options at this point I would definitely cancel this reservation. It will be long time before I travel on BA next time.
April 24th, 2008 at 1:10 pm |
The real problem with their seat assignment policy is that the policy is “hidden”. You can’t find out the policy exists until after purchasing the ticket. Just purchased business class RT SFO LHR and I have to say I went balistic when I tried to reserve seats. I would NOT have purchased the ticket had I known the BA policy. Fair to have any policy you want provided it is known before you take my money. Next time it’s Virgin Atlantic.