I'm looking to redeem some Avios on return flights for my wife and two young kids at some point. We will travel to Tokyo - out together, back with me returning earlier and my wife returning with the kids.

My plan is to get a 241 voucher in her name since I understand that the earner must travel which means it's not optimal for me to earn it in my name as we'd only be able to use it on one leg. However, I'm BAEC Silver and also want to use my right to book seats together (preferably CW "back middle 4"). How can I do this? I believe linking bookings is not sufficient to allow me to select their seats.

Could we book all flights together, use the 241, book seats together on both flights and then change (paying whatever fees of course) my return flight to an earlier date? I guess the alternative is to book both legs separately and use the 241 for the outbound flight only where I can also choose all of our seats, and then book the return as 2 bookings (one for me, one for the rest)...? Lose some value on the 241 but don't need to pay to change the original booking.

On a separate note, particularly if I go for the latter option above, how easy is it to check for JAL availability on ba.com? When I check it does show JAL availability on ba.com, but there's no easy way of searching just for JAL availability so it takes quite a long time... And JAL availability looks worse than BA!

And finally, does anyone have experience of JAL business class seat layout? I'm concerned with BA CW layout that on the return flight my wife won't be close enough to both children to prevent my 3 year old son from messing around with the seat divider. Are we likely to have similar concerns with (lack of) proximity on a JAL flight?

All guidance very much appreciated .