# Seating concerns with BritishAir



## Bill4728 (Jan 2, 2014)

Just booked our trip to Europe using BritishAir. Best times and only a few dollars more than any other airline. 

BUT  you can not choose your seat till 24 hours before takeoff unless you pay a $42 fee /seat /flight ( only $18 for flights within europe)  That add another $120 to the cost of the ticket!! 

WOW!!


----------



## Pompey Family (Jan 3, 2014)

Unfortunately BA are emulating the cheaper airlines and adding additional fees to whatever they can. Even business class tickets attract an additional fee to choose your seat. It's a shame they've taken this route as it cheapens them somewhat and leaves a bitter taste.

That said they are still my airline of choice and my first option when flying transatlantic, followed by Virgin and basically any non US airline.

It's also sad that there is such a discrepancy with how you're treated dependant on your class of travel.


----------



## SMHarman (Jan 3, 2014)

Bill4728 said:


> Just booked our trip to Europe using BritishAir. Best times and only a few dollars more than any other airline.
> 
> BUT  you can not choose your seat till 24 hours before takeoff unless you pay a $42 fee /seat /flight ( only $18 for flights within europe)  That add another $120 to the cost of the ticket!!
> 
> WOW!!



This has advantages and disadvantages.

The disadvantage is that clearly you cannot chose where you want to sit, but I assume you have provided them with your Executive Club number or AA FF number or similar and that has a seating preference in it (window / aisle etc).

The advantage is nobody else really choses where they sit.

Hopefully all people on the itinerary are on the same reservation number?  If not call BA to get the reservation numbers joined.

BAs great computer will then put each group on each reservation number together based on the preferences it is aware of, so as a group you are not finding that you can't sit together because everyone else has chosen their seat and all you have left is four middle seats all in a row, BAs methodology works to avoid that to a large extent, this is especially handy on the 3-4-3 747s where pick your seat gets lots of middle 2's and middle 1's left over for later bookers to have to select.

The process annoyed me initially but now I find it works as well as selecting your own seat on AA etc.


----------



## pwrshift (Mar 27, 2014)

I booked BA with AA miles from Rome to Toronto, via London, and couldn't believe all the extra fees for seat selection, etc., even for frequent flyer points in Business Class (UpperDeck) on the 747.  Looking fwd to it but glad I didn't have to pay what they want for those seats.

Brian


----------



## Bill4728 (Apr 10, 2014)

We had to check-in 24 hours before the flight to both our overseas flight and the connecting flight. No problems at all.


----------



## Gophesjo (Apr 10, 2014)

I took one BritishAir flight in Europe and was assigned one of those awful, much narrower, middle seats, and decided then and there that I would never ever fly BritishAir again.  Even Ryanair didn't have those awful middle sliver seats.


----------



## Ken555 (Apr 10, 2014)

Gophesjo said:


> I took one BritishAir flight in Europe and was assigned one of those awful, much narrower, middle seats, and decided then and there that I would never ever fly BritishAir again.  Even Ryanair didn't have those awful middle sliver seats.




Big difference between their European flights and their transatlantic flights, especially in business (Europe business isn't much at all). 


Sent from my iPad


----------



## thheath (Apr 10, 2014)

If you're flying from WA via this airlines, I would pay the extra for your seating preference.

It's way to long a flight to be stuck in some non reclining seat in the back of the bus, near the toilets.

IMHO


----------



## Bill4728 (Apr 14, 2014)

RE the fees

Seat fees suck but there are free meals and free drinks free first bag so all is not lost.


----------

