drvannostren

The seating thing makes sense, I've just never experienced not being able to change a seat on OLCI except for on LCCs. I was surprised to see that from a legacy carrier. It just seems to me that if you give out free seat selection to elites and/or people paying a higher fare class, OLCI it should be fair game because everyone who "deserves" the seat selection has already had that chance. Oh well.

I don't know DL/AA very well, but I do know you're right when it comes to United, it's a painful part of US flying. However, as a Canadian elite, we don't suffer this , if you have status, you get lounge access even flying domestically AND you get a drink, amazing concept right? I have zero issue with food for purchase, we've established that worldwide, airlines on short haul that feed you are the outlier. It's a nice touch when flying regional LH, but like on Copa it's a bit ridiculous, they give you a drink and a sandwich on PTY-MDE which is like a 45 minute flight. But not getting a DRINK, that seems REALLY stingy and downright crappy to me. I assume they have to be able to give you free water? To be fair I think they were giving out free coffee? I just don't drink coffee so it wasn't an option. I've heard people SAY BA went to an LCC model regionally, but I didn't realize how far that extended to. I kinda figured, ok pay for bags, pay for seats, but then I saw that they really went the full distance on it.

This stinks, I get that BA has no control over this, but man there are pleasant transit experiences (PTY, MUC) then there are terrible ones (MEX, FRA) I'd say LHR is somewhere in the middle.

I suppose that's always the case right? High tier elites for every airline have a better experience than others, that's who SHOULD be getting the best experience, I have no issues there, I guess I was just a bit underwhelmed by the whole thing. With your cost to MAD, it seems like you didn't have to pay much in the way of surcharges, it that a waiver for elites? I've never redeemed AS/AA miles on BA because it's always been a huge waste of miles to pay full price and then $500-700 on top of it in scam charges.

I don't necessarily think that's a great solution either. I mean the odds of me flying BA after the next month or so (already purchased tickets) are fairly low, but it's just a shame that they sunk their regional product to near lowest common denominator. People can critique LH all they want, but I find their regional offering pretty solid in comparison, same goes for my experiences flying Swiss and Brussels. I'm not necessarily opposed to paying for certain things too, obviously I don't believe when airlines claim that unbundling fares is better for consumers, because they don't drop the prices. But I flew Blue Air (Romanian LCC) from BRU-OTP and paid for a checked bag and a seat assignment, I didn't end up using the checked bag, I find myself paying for them on LCC's semi-frequently just in case, but that flight with those costs was about the same as the BA flight with none of the extras. Not exactly apples to apples sure, but had I picked a seat and paid for a bag I would've been in over 40GBP more which would almost double the ticket cost. I flew BA in this case basically because the time worked and I wanted to fly into LHR so that I wouldn't have to transit across London to make the connection. I would've been totally satisfied with my BA economy experience if I had been able to get a free cold beverage (juice/soda is fine) and an OLCI seat selection. The actual onboard product was fine by me.

You're correct and I recognize I got a "bonus" from the check-in agent. My point was while I was ok with the seat gamble and not pre-selecting, I was surprised to see even at OLCI I wasn't able to switch for free. That totally came out of left field for me.

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Correct again. One thing BA does do right regionally is the HBO size is more reasonable than most LCCs. They use real world hand baggage sizes imo, whereas I swear my jacket folded up won't fit in their sizer bins. I only asked for the checking of the bag to not roll mine around, as soon as she said she couldn't link the two tickets, I didn't push as I know it might not be possible, but it's always worth asking as it has worked for me on star tickets previously. I knew I would've had to clear customs, while I had time and no issues with my passport entering the UK, I didn't really wanna go through the check-in process again especially since I wasn't traveling out of T5 so there wouldn't really be any fancy process to it.

I've heard about the AVOD system and it's just a real shame. It's the poorest one I've seen flying in recent memory, I flew ANA 767 YVR-HND something like 4 years ago before they changed it to 787 and it had a tiny square version of something similar. I would hope that the screens are better throughout the plane, and maybe in a smaller version it's not so glaringly bad, some of the UA 777s (I think the 772) have pretty weak AVOD, but the screen is much smaller and in business it doesn't look this bad.

As far as the space goes, that was something that didn't bother me at all. Like I said it was nice to be able to let your feet roam free when sleeping. I flew a brand new 330Neo from TAP in business across the pond and while the seat was good, it suffers from the foot coffin. I understand the 380s have the same F seats but a bit bigger, that would be nice, but I was pretty satisfied with the seat itself.