Originally Posted by
jud_mc
It is worth mentioning that I had been checking Expert Flyer this morning to get an overview of any spare seats on these flights, and they were showing a handful available across them, so I was hopeful of some form of success.
Also just to be absolutely clear, seats showing as empty on an ExpertFlyer seat map does *not* mean that there are unsold/available seats on that flight. It just means those particular seats are as yet unallocated. The flight could be way overbooked and sold out.
If you were looking at the *inventory* on ExpertFlyer (only in the paid version), that shows what is available inventory, but that can also exceed the number of seats on the plane.
The simplest way to see if BA is actually willing to offer a seat on a slight is to see if it's available for booking on BA.com, but again that doesn't necessarily match other channels.