Originally Posted by
Schultzois
I agree. On most any decent airline, if you remove a part of the seat, that seat would get put out of service and the cabin size drops by one............................... would have triggered exactly the type of re-allocation within the cabin that the OP suggested, but it's BA's pretending "half a seat is still okay in CW" that pre-empted everything.
In normal circumstances, this is what would happen. What I think has happened here is that the footrest was reported as faulty on arrival, the "Flight Monitoring Unit" assumed the Cabin Equipment Team would have it fixed before departure when, in fact, they ended up having to remove it and take it away for repair.
From the tone of the OP and the CSD's initial response, it seems as though the missing footrest came as a bit of a surprise to everyone!
I must admit, I have had situations like this myself where something has been a bit "last minute" and you have to think on your feet. Once passengers are boarding on to the aeroplane and time is fast running out, you do become limited on what options you can offer.