Originally Posted by
qwest01
Contrary to what has been said already my practical experience of this situation on a flight from LGW to SKT was that the F cabin was greyed out online in MMB until OLCI opened. As soon as OLCI was open the F cabin was available for CW pax to allocate themselves into seats. I was able to assign all 4 of our party into seats in the F cabin even though only I had status and that was only silver. The cabin was filled up and the CW cabin was full also. The service was CW and the crew was stretched with 2 crew looking after the F cabin and 2 looking after the CW cabin.
Now this was a full flight BA had obviously oversold the CW cabin but had not allocated seats in advance to the F cabin. perhaps no Golds were booked in CW on that flight.
I am not sure that this is contrary to what has been said.
I specifically said "Unless very overbooked, F cabin is unlikely to appear in OLCI" and BA "will minimise the number of pax there and normally BAEC GCHs and OWE only, unless they really need extra capacity".
The flight you describe was absolutely full so they knew in advance that whole F cabin was required. In that case, the F cabin will appear in OLCI as just another bit of CW.
As you note, 'the crew was stretched with 2 crew looking after the F cabin and 2 looking after the CW cabin'. Which is the reason I suggested that the OP doesn't get too disappointed if not in the F cabin. An F seat it may be, but the service can be sub-normal CW.