Originally Posted by
Tobias-UK
What many who come here to complain about this policy appear not appreciate is that before BA introduced this policy it wasn’t even possible to reserve seats in advance unless by status or if you’d purchased a ticket in the higher-priced fare buckets. The policy was introduced to provide those passengers an option to choose a seat before checkin.
My memory is terrible, but I definitely recall free seat selection in CW at the time of booking for non-status customers, within the last 10 years*.
*I might be wrong on the 10 years but definitely within 15