Originally Posted by
CoCatMan
I was surprised to find out that my Business Class ticket from Denver to Venice did not allow me to pre-select seats without paying ($588 for roundtrip for wife & I). Kind of outrageous. So I figured I'd just wait till check-in 7-days prior to departure and select seats for free. However, I've heard that if you wait and the flight is oversold you run the risk of getting bumped to economy. Is this true?
This is hardly unique to BA.
It is a way to reward frequent fliers, so that folks who fly a lot and have status can have decent seats available for free, even at short notice bookings.
It is a polarizing state of affairs. People with OneWorld status tend to like it because they are rewarded for their loyalty to the alliance but infrequent fliers can get very annoyed at this (which is understandable)
This topic has been covered here multiple times.