Crew inviting people to seats next to GCHs blocked by FLY/Altea
Feb 21, 2017, 3:53 pm
#166
Join Date: Aug 2008
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Criricise away, the crew, under the authority of the captain can move anyone from any seat to any other seat that they see fit. They would have to have a very good reason to do so but you buy a seat not a right to a free seat next to you. You can dislike and criticise all you like it will not change anything, as it is enshrined in the ANO not in BA rules, none of which can override the ANO.
Feb 21, 2017, 4:25 pm
#168
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Criricise away, the crew, under the authority of the captain can move anyone from any seat to any other seat that they see fit. They would have to have a very good reason to do so but you buy a seat not a right to a free seat next to you. You can dislike and criticise all you like it will not change anything, as it is enshrined in the ANO not in BA rules, none of which can override the ANO.
Feb 21, 2017, 4:36 pm
#169
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This ^^^
Until the last few weeks the whole theoretical seating concept was quite abstract to me. But I just flew to LA recently for business (in WT) and bought a separate ticket for my wife. Being BAEC Silver I'd chosen my seat (A380 upper deck) so that the one next to me was free. For months prior to the flight pretty much the entire WT cabin was available. At -24hrs when checking my wife in so we could seat together, all but a handful of seats were blocked to her, forcing me to change my own seat and find to my huge surprise that I still could select pretty much any seat in the cabin. The exact same thing happened on the return flight and on both occasions the cabin was far from full so why restrict my wife to a choice of about 5 seats when there is spare capacity anyway and the seats blocked have no specific feature such as extra legroom or bassinet etc..
Does that mean pretty much anyone else but my wife had status in that cabin and Fly was keeping free seats around them? Whichever the reason, I think a system that block the the vast vast majority of seats in a cabin that has so much spare capacity is idiotic. And of course, after boarding and on realizing how many spare seats there were, many pax relocated themselves with the crew's blessing.
So aside from frustrating people at OLCI I doubt the system achieved much.
Until the last few weeks the whole theoretical seating concept was quite abstract to me. But I just flew to LA recently for business (in WT) and bought a separate ticket for my wife. Being BAEC Silver I'd chosen my seat (A380 upper deck) so that the one next to me was free. For months prior to the flight pretty much the entire WT cabin was available. At -24hrs when checking my wife in so we could seat together, all but a handful of seats were blocked to her, forcing me to change my own seat and find to my huge surprise that I still could select pretty much any seat in the cabin. The exact same thing happened on the return flight and on both occasions the cabin was far from full so why restrict my wife to a choice of about 5 seats when there is spare capacity anyway and the seats blocked have no specific feature such as extra legroom or bassinet etc..
Does that mean pretty much anyone else but my wife had status in that cabin and Fly was keeping free seats around them? Whichever the reason, I think a system that block the the vast vast majority of seats in a cabin that has so much spare capacity is idiotic. And of course, after boarding and on realizing how many spare seats there were, many pax relocated themselves with the crew's blessing.
So aside from frustrating people at OLCI I doubt the system achieved much.
Feb 21, 2017, 4:39 pm
#170
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other than that those who also travel on Lufthansa - who have the same module but adapted for their customer model - will perhaps have vaguely noticed that BA is now doing something similar. [Lufthansa's module is detailed online, notably in the German language version of FT].
Feb 21, 2017, 4:44 pm
#171
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I'm really puzzled as to why this thread is turning so dramatic and so personal. Again, the issue is a pretty simple one: BA has a policy to prioritise certain pax for free seats when the cabin is not full (and no, when they discuss it, despite what you say, they do not say: 'to keep those seats blocked at check in', they actually mention 'trying to give GCH/GGL a free middle seat when the cabin is not full', and yes, they have mentioned it).
Moreoever, some crew members like CIHY have been explicit that he did assure us that at least on long haul, crew members have not been informed about the way FLY has been programmed. So some passengers have been told things by BA management that management itself has clearly failed to inform crew members about.
Additionally, there is an assumption that seat changes only occur to sit families together, which is simply not the case. When I have experienced it (and again, as mentioned, I am not bothered by it personally) it has more often been just a single pax moving typically to be closer to the front or in the emergency row.
My personal preference would be that BA informs crew about what they are doing with ALTEA-FLY in terms of seating prioritisation, and then confirm the crew's discretion to allow seat changes when they see that fit. I think that this would make crew members aware of something that some have explicitly mentioned not to be informed about and allow them to use their judgement as to when to allow changes or not and/or how to deal with the passengers losing the free middle seat that they had been assigned. Crew could decide that when it is a case of resitting a family with a child together it is worth allowing, and when it is a passenger just wanting a better seat for no other reason than they like it better, then it might not be (or might be, I don't care, I'm just saying that the crew can consciously decide where to place the bar). And perhaps, they can take that opportunity to offer the passenger losing the free seat a chance to move him/herself if another seat would enable them to have no neighbour.
I don't mind people saying changes should be freeer than that, and I don't mind people saying changes should be more controlled than that, but I do mind people painting fellow FTers as some sort of monster/witch just for having an opinion. This is not the sort of debate that I am personally used to.
Last edited by orbitmic; Feb 21, 2017 at 5:03 pm
Feb 21, 2017, 7:03 pm
#172
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Ideally, BA want their flights to be completely full. Then there won't be any spare seats to be blocked!!
Feb 21, 2017, 10:58 pm
#173
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In spite of various warnings from the mod team, sadly what could have been an interesting thread has again spiralled downwards into a series of personal battles and insult trading between some participants.
Closure is more than overdue, so sadly - again, with apologies to those who did try to contribute positively and properly - access to it is now blocked.
/mod
Closure is more than overdue, so sadly - again, with apologies to those who did try to contribute positively and properly - access to it is now blocked.
/mod