Originally Posted by elrao

Flew LGW-MCO last week in economy (I was paying, for 5, not the company!), had a pretty bad experience.

Was my first flight since re-qualifying as silver, so used the club checking desk which took forever as they've not really got themselves sorted since the terminal switch. Had checked in online, having booked 15 J & K and 16 J & K as there were five of us including the baby, and got boarding passes for those seats. I needed to checking the car seats and buggy, hence the trip to the desk. Went to oversize luggage and noticed we'd been issued boarding cards in row 34!

Went back and queried it and got told it was due to change of aircraft, and row 15 didn't exist. We hadn't even been told, they just moved us and issued new ones without even mentioning it. If we'd had hand baggage only we wouldn't have known till the gate.

Fair enough, change of aircraft = people needed to be moved, but we lost our pre booked seats (with bassinet) and got shoved at the back. I spoke to the duty manager who was useless, couldn't explain why we had lost our bassinet and why they didn't just move us back to 16 J, K and 17 J, K which were the equivalent seats?? There were exactly the same number of bassinet seats on the flight (I counted) but the people in row 15 were moved into empty seats without bassinets, it happened to 2 other couples with babies too, with the people in the bassinet seats having no need to be there, they were just booked into row 16. Some moved (for couples with one baby), but we couldn't get 4 seats and crew could do nothing as they can't force able bodied people with no children to move seat.

Then we took off to find that the inflight entertainment didn't work from row 33 backwards, couldn't even watch the sky map. It makes 9 hours with small children feel like double that.

Then they told me we hadn't prebooked kids meals! Most likely related to the seat move, thankfully I had the original boarding cards and had to prove to the cabin manager that I had booked them before they magically find them. No apology then either

All in all, a pretty disastrous flight, my wife has sworn to never fly BA again, which is a shame they've always served me well when flying solo, but with a family they were a disaster.