I honestly wouldn’t think anyone was up to “no good” at this Stone Age as every seat change or other action can be traced to the person who did it and can be questioned. If foul play then this would have serious consequences.


it is mostly due to the here well documented IT systems BA have and their lack of correspondence, the amount of times “paperwork says seat ABC INOP- do not use” and the seat consequently gets blocked in the system meaning Customers will be moved.

In the meantime seats have been fixed and this has not been updated, the ground staff or flight editor doesn’t know that yet.

The same works the other way around. Customers have been seats assigned, Crew board the aircraft and see “ooops the seat is not working and it’s a deferred defect” - Customer gets a seat change last minute.

That’s why you sometimes get turfed out when there is no need, not the ground staff or the Crews fault it’s a system issues.

As others have elaborated those “blocked seats” rightly or wrongly may get assigned to staff travel Passengers or involuntary upgrades. But in an ideal world they should be informed of seat malfunctions, which doesn’t always happen.

I remember operating flights with up to 20 inop club seats, meaning the acres had to manually move those seats inflight, not an easy task and takes the Crew out of the service for a considerable amount of time, never mind the abuse they get by disgruntled Customers