Originally Posted by
Oil-man
Travelling on my own dime on BA11 from LHR-SIN last week (hand baggage fare for a long weekend trip). I was assigned a window seat at the back of the plane on the lower deck. It’s not great having to climb over up to two people for 13 hours, but that’s the luck of the draw - or so I thought.
As usual, I was offered to select my seat (and pay £59 IIRC for an aisle seat) and I was offered around 10-15 alternatives (not all aisle seats). All remaining 280+ out of 299 economy seats where crossed out and not for selection. This I believe gave the impression that the flight was nearly full in economy.
However, the booking class on the day of travel for economy was still the lowest available, so I expected the flight to be quiet, so thought I’d take my chance to get an aisle seat on board rather than paying £59.
In the end, the flight itself was less than half full in economy, and I snagged a whole row of 4 in the middle to myself (poor mans business class!).
This left a sour taste in my mouth. The way the seat selection was presented by BA was a con in my opinion, with the only objective to get people into parting with their hard earned cash unnecessarily.
Sharp practise by BA IMO.
This is not a con nor related to your buying a HBO fare. you should just look up the thread on theoretical searing and you’ll understand exactly why only a small sub-selection of empty seats was offered to you.
ps: plus the argument makes little sense: if ba wanted to tempt you they’d offer as many seats as possible for you to choose in order to tempt you. People know others will check in too so you could have a tonne of seats to choose from even in a cabin that will be sold out. Listing few for sale would just increase the risk customers won’t be offered something they want to buy.