fripperies

I'll drop from Gold to Silver in my next membership year. What will happen to my seat selections for future flights where I have used status to book seats such 62A/K? Will the system shift me to random other seats? And what about existing seat reservations for my (Bronze) wife "to complete party. Will they still be honoured?

BA5E

You will have the ability on selecting seats when u book flights as u can with silver status.^

SteveF

Even if you drop to Bronze or Blue existing seat selections will stick, but you will lose the right to change them until T-24h (Blue) or T-7d (Bronze)

corporate-wage-slave

True, unless there is an equipment change, even a temporary notional swap lasting a few hours. Those routes which are 3 class 777 are particularly prone to this.

fripperies

Just to report, the above isn't what happened in my case. I dropped to Silver two days ago and I have lost the 1K seats in F that I reserved when Gold. The new seats allocated by the system seem rather random (3A, 4E). Not a big deal but I rather wish I had reserved 2K when they were still available!

Globaliser

1A and 1K in F have long been exceptions to the general position.

trvllvr123

Just out of interest does anyone know what happens if you gain status and have already paid? I'm thinking of applying for the plat card and have already paid for wtp seats. I doubt we'll get a refund with the Marco polo gold will we? Also we have a linked booking on a different Pnr in cw, again they're not likely to let me have seat selection if that's my OH's booking are they?

BA or bust

Just to be clear (correct me if I am wrong please). This rule only applies to those two seats in F.

We have a summer trip (Avios) seats in 2A&2K which I am hoping we will be able to shift up to 1A&1K closer to the time. Am about to move back up to Silver (phew!) but this level of status won't help us until OLCI.

SteveF

Yes, just 1A/K

FrancisA

Hang on! First row (or rows if a large cabin) in CE are also reserved for golds.

The exception with 1A and 1K is that each occupant needs to be gold or above. With the CE seats a gold can put a non-gold into one of these seats, but if there is no gold on the PNR these seats will appear as blocked.

As for original point of this post, former status seat reservations tend to be honoured after a drop in status, unless BA has some reason run the routine which validates seat selections. This will happen if there is an equipment change and could happen for other reasons. If it does get run, it'll be musical chairs time!

SteveF

Hang on! The question was about row 1 in F.

Globaliser

Things seem to have changed since that exchange.

It used to be the case that if you pre-allocated seats while you were entitled to them, and you then lost the status that gave you that entitlement, the existing seat pre-allocations would stick but any changes would be done on the basis of your current status (including now having to pay, if relevant).

The exception to that general position was 1A and 1K in F, from which you would reliably be evicted as soon as you lost your Gold/Emerald status.

Now the situation is different. BA appears to have introduced a mechanism that sweeps existing reservations and cancels pre-allocations if the passengers on the booking are no longer entitled to those pre-allocations. In other words, what used to be true only of 1A and 1K in F is now the general rule.

For clarity, these were the previous (and now inaccurate) posts in this thread:-

SteveF

You are indeed correct, at least regarding ET exit rows; I reserved exit row seats on tomorrow's Naples flight when I made the reservation more than 10 months ago as a CX Gold. These stuck until a couple of days ago when I noticed that we'd been shifted back a couple of rows. Checked in this morning at exactly T-24 and grabbed them back .

SteveF

Or not... The same exit row seats stuck on the return , so the booting out/seat shifting of non status pax appears to be random .

EsherFlyer

Do we think that is run as a part of the pre-flight process (so all will appear well until just before the flight), or periodically across all flights (so they'll disappear at some TBD time)? And is it just seats-of-some-specialness that get shuffled?

I recently dropped to Bronze, but the assignments I'd already made on various segments are still there. In general they are groups of 4 arranged the way I want them on the starboard side towards the front of 'general population', but not exit rows, etc. Not a big drama if they get lost, but it will highlight the value of retaining at least Silver continuously rather than just happening to have it when booking.