Originally Posted by Rubytheterrier

I don’t wish to teach anyone to suck eggs but I wanted to share my recent downgrade from First to Business experience as it may be helpful to others.

In brief we had several ‘mixed flight’ award flights in both First and Business.

The flight sectors in First were ‘cancelled’ due to an aircraft change to a non first equipped aircraft (380 - 777).

The flights showed as ‘cancelled’ even though the replacement aircraft retained the same flight number.

I was unable to resolve this online and had to go through the call centre.

As always when dealing with the call centre make it as easy as possible for the agent. In our case I had already identified suitable alternative flights (in First) which included seat numbers for all sectors.

The agent initially stated only revenue seats available - a polite pushback reminding them our flight was cancelled / downgraded so this was not applicable quickly resolved this. We were rebooked onto new flights on both sectors into revenue seats (no award seat availability).

The agent made the required changes and stated we can book seats on line - yes you can - but if you previously had free seat selection for a pre Nov 1st booking as we did, it now tries to charge you! A further call resolved this and the agent booked our seats.

Rinse and repeat same scenario for another flight (separate call). This played out exactly the same. This time however I asked the agent to book the seats for us and provided the seat numbers for all sectors. They then tried to charge me and claimed as the ‘flight’ was post November 2025, I would have to pay. Again a firm but polite pushback stating the ‘booking’ was pre November so we qualified for free seat selection and this was not a voluntary change, but due to a cancellation / downgrade, resolved it.

I hope this may prove helpful to others.