Originally Posted by
Swiss Tony
Status members get free reservations early (at time of booking or 7 days out), so do full fare tickets and some corporate deals. Otherwise you get to pick at 24 hours out.
This has been the case for quite a few years now. I think it sucks too, but BA clearly think the money they make outweighs the loss from customers who walk away.
As is always said whenever this topic comes up, BA also thinks that the customers it pleases and keeps through this policy outweigh the customers that it displeases.
The former category are likely to be relatively frequent BA/OW customers or paying a lot of money for their tickets; the latter category are likely to be relatively infrequent customers.
The policy has the effect of giving the former category a better choice of seats for longer, and given the proportion of passengers on many flights who fall into the former category, other solutions aren't likely to work any better for the latter category.