I went on to buy tickets and encountered a problem that could be a negative policy change.

I searched for 2 adults for J seats with the BA app on QR and found space to my liking. I checked if it was bookable by selecting the specific seats. It worked fine, the app showed me the amount of Avios needed and the cost of the taxes. Furthermore the button at the bottom of the page ‘continue’ was clickable. So far so good.

However as soon as I searched for 2 adults and 1 lap infant; I got an error message, either after hitting the search button (when only a QR flight was available) or after selecting a QR flight (when more options than QR were available and the search results showed). The error message I got was “Sorry, there’s a problem with our systems. Please try again, and if it still doesn’t work, you might want to try again later”. If I managed to reach the search results and selected a QR flight, I got the following additional text at the bottom of the page under ‘Total Price’: “Sorry there is a problem with booking this journey online. Try selecting other flights. “

I tried several days, different browsers, my wife’s account, different journeys, dates, etc. but nothing worked. So today I called BAEC to make the booking by phone. Long story short, they couldn’t book the tickets. I got some BS explanation that Qatar was not a partner airline.

I decided to book the seats I found earlier online for myself and my wife and afterwards call BAEC again to add the infant. I spend approx 1,5 hour on the phone but without a result. They couldn’t add the infant. Then they cancelled my booking and tried to make a new one themselves. They couldn’t. They advised me to book on the Qatar website (which obviously isn’t an option).

I thought maybe there is something wrong with my account as I booked similar J seats with an infant with the BA app earlier this year. So I registered a new ‘test account’ to see what I could do with the new account. Even with the new account I get an error when selecting a QR search result. When I select a search result from another airline (for example RJ), I can proceed with the booking and everything seems to work fine.

it seems to me that QR blocks J bookings with lap infants made through BAEC as they do on their own website or is this a temporary glitch. Any other recent experiences with booking J seats with lap infants on QR through BAEC?