Originally Posted by
dubistokay
Of course, it was tolerable - took maybe 5min longer to exit the plane, obviously there was no immigration, but I had no access to BoB given the short length of the flight. However I can’t help but wonder if this is all normal and in policy? I did raise a complaint and am waiting to hear back.
Welcome to Flyertalk and welcome to the BA forum
dubistokay. It's good to see you here and I hope we will see more of you. Moreover, I think I would be correct in arguing that the single thing that will prevent this sort of thing happening again is not writing to Customer Relations - it is participation in this forum, where the term "curtain roulette" is a regular feature.
Row 6 on A319 from GLA is very much at risk from the curtain moving, but (e.g.) row 10 is unlikely to suffer this, and that is the exit row too. Moreover your other big risk with row 6 is a swap to an A320, most of whom don't have airvents in row 6. Usually the curtain doesn't jump by more than a row at a time, very occasionally 2, but it usually is a process that evolves in the period from 72 to 24 hours to departure, though it can happen later than that. Being right behind the curtain is where the roulette comes into play and some judgement calls need to be made (e.g. can I keep monitoring this? am I that bothered? is CE filling up?). Note the Theoretical Seating thread in the Dashboard, being Gold two-thirds of the way down the cabin may bring other benefits, and also that it someways a better tactic is to start that far back and move forward, rather than starting at the front and being forced backwards.
I suspect the reply you will get back from Customer Relations will be slightly apologetic but essentially say that seating isn't guaranteed. What it won't say is that you greatly escalate the risk by being in row 6, and the further back you are, the less likely it is to happen. Given a moving curtain, there isn't much choice but to move somewhere, and if it's bad enough having 1 customer affected, it would be worse having 2 customers impacted.