Originally Posted by LTN Phobia

This is one of the 'awkward' situations, I think. I caveat my reply by saying that I don't mind sitting away from my husband. As window seat hogging pair on long haul flight, the only choice we often have are well apart. On the last two flights the combination was 1A/4K and 1K/4A. It wasn't a desire to sit as far apart as possible while being in the same cabin, they were the only window seats left! Another caveat - I'm GGL, he's a (gifted) Gold - not that it would make any difference except for the fact that we can choose any seat in advance without paying a fee but we sometimes have no choice but to sit rather a long way from each other even then.

However I do understand people want to sit together. I have a friend who would not travel unless she's seated next to her partner because she's scared of flying (years of exposure to my prattling about flying unfortunately hasn't helped enough for her to fly independently yet). I also know many others with fear of flying although they would fly alone if essential.

At the same time, I can see the difficulties here. One thing for sure - BA hasn't done anything wrong. It's rather risky for them to shift people willy nilly to accommodate people who want to sit together too - how do they know those two sitting next to each other on separate PNR haven't actually chosen to sit together, for instance?

I'll give you a recent example that actually annoyed the hell out of me, despite my being a relatively relaxed traveller. I was seat shifted from 2F on G-GATx (this is a bulkhead window seat, I do not sit in window seat on short haul unless it's a bulkhead seat or endless legroom one) to 5F without consultation. As it turns out it was due to a couple who did not want to be seated apart. Why they did not move 2D to 5D is beyond me, but this is how it was done. Now, I hate being trapped in window seat as I am mildly claustrophobic. I asked to be found a seat in ET such is my disliking of being trapped.

The agent seems to have felt sorry for me and fully realised that 5F is hardly a reasonable substitute for 2F in this case, and contacted Seating who restored my original seat and put the couple together in 5D and 5F instead of 2D and 2F, which they should have done in the first place. Whether it was at their DYKWIA insistence that they'd be given a pair of good seats or just unthinking agent who thought 5F was an equivalent seat to 2F, I don't know. But it certainly did not please me.

The point is, never mind the fact that BA seemingly mindlessly moved someone to a much worse seat (if this was requested by the couple, it should have been refused in my view), why should someone who pre-assigned 2F for some time be inconvenienced by random people who want to sit together when it was entirely avoidable by seating the couple together in 5D/F instead?

Before anyone accuses me of being mean, I would swap seats for those who wish to sit together if the new seat is not substantially worse than the original one and have done so many times without being asked, but in this case there was clearly a solution that did not involve substantially disadvantaging a stranger (in this case me).

In order for BA to sort out the OP's seating situation, something similar may have needed to be done and it would have inconvenienced someone and maybe BA did not do it because of that.

Really, sometimes BA tries to (half) do the right thing by those in front of them and end up inconveniencing the 'invisible ones' who aren't right in front of them, and they also fail by not taking the risk of moving someone - they can't really win here in many cases.

In fact in my view the request of on-board swap should have been made to someone in lower deck so that whoever obliges would gain, not lose.

In any case I really think don't there was anything more BA could have done in this case, except not asking someone to move to an inferior seat for the OP (which in my opinion should not have happened when it was avoidable). As far as action to benefit the OP, I genuinely do not think BA could have done more in this case.