BA took our 3 seats to give to 1 pilot!!
 

My silver card allows me to select my seats for free and around t-72 I can get the unblocked seats reserved for Golds.

I picked 2 D E F for me Mrs Martinswin son and lap infant. this was for our LHR to MAN leg of a trip to Europe(BCN)

Got boarding passes issued at check in and when it was time to board we got a beep and the gate agent said "sorry sir there has been an equipment change you are now in 9 D E F "

I remarked to my wife that this was BS I wonder what the real reason was that caused the agent to feed us this lie.

Yes a pilot returning home had been allocated a seat in row 2 and no one else to share D E and F with. No doubt as the aircraft was only 2/3 full they probably thought changing our seats would be ok.

Had we been asked it might have been but I hate being lied to.

This is the final nail in the coffin for any future BA bookings for me. it may seem petty to some(for a 40 minute flight) but travelling with kids is pretty stressful.

but i have just now booked a couple of ryanair and easyjet flights to Europe. now that we can pay for priority boarding with these 2 low cost carriers(tried it earlier this year to DUB) I find they rigidly enforce the rules(unlike BA) and if i want a lounge i can pay for one.

My long haul carriers will be AA/Delta from DUB to USA and QR or EK from AMS should we do long haul East.

Rant over

Bye then.

Ps, You do realise that in booking AA to go to the US, BA still get some of the Revenue?

No, really? I gave up BA years ago. Poor service etc. They may regard themselves as a flagship carrier, but not in my book.
Why should BA get revenue when I fly AA?

Oooh dear. I must admit I don't see it the end of the world, but with a child in tow I can fully see you would prefer things to go like clockwork. Are you sure all 3 seats in row 2 were in full working condition? (E.g. perhaps one would not stay in the upright position?).

Note that many crew fly on standby. They only get the available seats - if any - at the last minute at the gate. So if a seat went off spec you would be seat shifted at an early stage, and by unfortunate juxtaposition, that means that crew are more likely than most to be seen in your seat should they be fixed, or deemed to be ok by the Commander. So the odds are stacked in favour of this happening. To the best of my knowledge and experience BA - unlike many airlines - do not prioritise crew seating over revenue/redemption seating on the whole. There may be some exceptions (and I think I may have seen one case which looked a bit odd), but generally it's most unlikely that you were targeted here, other than that you were a group of 3 and therefore had 3 chances of being hit.

They won't if you fly DL - but they have an agreement with AA (and IB I think) so they all get a proportion of each other's revenue from transatlantic.

Joint Business Venture over the Atlantic... Whoever you fly out of AA/BA/IB/AY... They all get a share of your revenue so by shifting your transatlantic business to AA/IB/AY due to BA Dissatisfaction, your actually still making BA money.

That doesn't concern me.

Although I understand your frustration, an equipment change is still a fairly plausible explanation. When this happens and seats are reassigned, other last minute arrivals may have gotten to the ones reserved by yourself before reallocation takes place.........it is fairly common unfortunately. Travelling with kids is stressful as you say and is unfortunate what happened, but sometimes you just have to take the rough with the smooth. I have no experience with this happening to me on AA/QR/EK etc. but would think that they all have the same annoying glitches at times. Chin up and all that :)

I'm not totally anti BA.. just put them to to the back of the queue for my future business.

I suspect you may be jumping to conclusions.

there was no equipment change as I checked with the CSD

It is very likely you were moved for trim purposes if the aircraft was not full.

Pilots travelling on BA business or using their standby tickets to travel home will have their seats allocated last. So at the time your seat was moved in the system, that pilot would not have even checked in for the flight and his seating would be a low priority to BA.

It could well be that he asked if he could sit there and that the operating pilot said it would be alright and not affect the trim, it often happens that the system allocates seat in a precautionary way but by the time we actually board a flight, the trim is no longer an actual issue due to the freight on board not causing it to be an issue after all.

Aviation is a very complex fast moving business. The series of events started with you being moved to different seats. It ended when you boarded and saw a pilot in the sets originally allocated to you.

In between any thinks could have happened. Equipment COULD have been changed and seats shuffled around but then equipment changed back again. But of course sat assignments are not then necessarily reverted to the original.

BA as a rule do not put staff ahead of pax.

Now you would be quite right to be outraged if, having taken your seats, you were all asked to move so a pilot could sit in them. But that wasn't the case

Goodbye, I hope your new preferred carriers treat you better

One of the three seats may have been peed on during the inbound thus rendering it out of order.

People misunderstand how great BA is all the time. Most underappreciated and misunderstood bunch since the Spanish Inquisition.