Im having a bit of a wrangle with BAEC at the mo. My partner and I are travelling with two friends on 27th Dec to Johannesburg in First. Our friends are currently in 2a/k and we are 5e/f. Ive been asking BAEC to shift them to 1a/k (and then us to 2a/k) for the past 12 months but to no avail, even tho 1a/k are still showing unoccupied on expertflyer and one of the friends is a BAEC Gold card holder.

It was my understanding that Gold card holders could choose these seat automatically va MMB at any time, but again, its not letting them do that either (one of them is Gold, the other Silver).

Repeated calls to BA are getting me nowhere and they just keep saying 1a/k may be occupied and that we are currenty in the best seating configuration. We just dont want to be walking backwards and forwards along the cabin every time we want to chat.

Any ideas what is going on here and if there is anything else we could do to move them to 1a/k? Could the seats actually be taken even tho expertflyer currently shows nobody in them (except they are blocked as usual as per 4e/f).

Thanks