aircrashsurvivor

BertieBadger

It has been removed for this winter (so they can sub in 788s or 3 class 777s for the ongoing Trent 1000 engine issues I presume), I hadn't heard that it had been removed for good.

There is never any guarantee of F seats being released for rewards as far as I know (just CW, WT) so the absence of them could just mean they have chosen not to release any (yet)

GTR56

TWCLAM

Whilst I've heard of this seat being used, fairly widely, as crew rest did you book the seat? If so then to turf a paying pax out of their seat is, imho, appalling! There's not one of us who'd argue FD & CC need their rest but if I got turfed out of a booked seat for crew rest then i'd want, and wouldn't stop until I got at least a 50% refund. I dont want my Captain, 1st Officer or any of the crew to be falling asleep for quite obvious reasons and I wouldn't hold them accountable per say but if I was allowed to reserve that seat & was then told I need to move on a day flight let alone a red eye/ overnight then BA have a lot to answer for for allowing the seat to be booked in the 1st place. With the exception of every single seat in the cabin being taken up at which point my support of hard working crew might lower that to say 35% of full published rate on day of flight i'd find being told to move to accommodate crew beyond reproach. Keep the seat empty so it can be used for crew 100% but don't sell it and then turf out a paying pax. Status isn't even a thing in that case. You simply keep it free for much needed crew rest OR crew use elsewhere in the cabin OR you dont sell the damn seat.

corporate-wage-slave

That is usually what happens: 4K is blocked for crew rest and can't be selected in the first place. If you look into the seat plans for MCO-LGW for the next few months, it's already there. It wasn't perhaps clear in the previous post, but I think s/he was removed from 4K some weeks before departure. What I guess happened is that the previous set-up had 5K blocked for crew rest, the aircraft was then changed to the new layout, the block was moved to 4K and GTR56 found their reservation impacted.

But generally speaking there is a crew rest seat somewhere on longer services - it's 3K on 787-8, 7K on 787-9, so it's worth watching out for that. Sometimes crew will release the seat, particularly if the aircraft has other seating options available (e.g. an empty seat in First).

GTR56

TedToToe

A question regarding the information in the wiki.

G-VIIV, W, Y and L are shown as 'coming up' and all are currently 4-class. V and L look like they are going to be converted to 3-class, whilst W and Y are staying as 4-class. Is this correct?

no2blues

We're travelling to Cancun next year on BA2203/BA2202. Following making the booking we paid to choose our seats which is where the issue now lies.
Outbound (BA2203) we were presented with a 40W (Rows 10-14) configuration and, having no status, we chose 11A and 11B whereas inbound (BA2202) was 24W (rows 12-14). We ended up choosing 13A and 13B (even though my wife considered it might be "unlucky") as I wasn't sure if in Row 14 they would end up being non-reclinable.

All of this background is largely irrelevant as I can tell from this thread and from checking thebasource.com that in fact all of the planes in use on that route for the last few weeks on LGW-CUN have already been re-furbished and so we'll almost certainly end up in a WTP zone with 52W.

So.... Not quite sure what to do as although I'm happy with the second row in WTP, we're expecting at some point to no longer be in that position once the online seat map reflects reality - particularly inbound. Is it worth giving BA a ring or do I just wait and until magically the seat map becomes correct (I'm checking it pretty much daily)? Is there some sort of Expert Flyer alert I can set up that would help? Incidentally, I had checked CW on Expert Flyer and IIRC that's already showing 32J outbound as per the expected changes.

On a side note.... many thanks for the massive amount of fantastic information here - I would have remained in total ignorance of things like thebasource.com, Expert Flyer, Flight Radar 24 if not for this site.

Globaliser

Welcome to FT, no2blues!If EF shows you the same seat map that you can see on ba.com, I think there's almost certainly nothing that the call centre can do because they will see the same seat map. It is already "correct" in the sense that it reflects the current planned/loaded configuration for your flight - and however certain you can be that it will change, neither EF nor ba.com nor the call centre will see the change until it happens.

You can, however, set up an EF aircraft change alert (via the seat map) which will tell you whenever the configuration of the aircraft changes. That would seem to be what you're looking for for this purpose.

FWIW, all WT+ seats have fully recline, even in the last row of the WT+ cabin.

TWCLAM

As @Globaliser said. It's worth noting that BA never sent us notification about the airplane being changed from 4 to a 3 class even with booked seats like yourself so you shouldn't rely on them to do so this time around either( although obviously it would be nice if they did) so an EF alert or checking daily yourself is the way to go.

We had the rear pair in ET which became a triple on the new config which we wouldn't of been happy to turn up and find although we moved to J both ways in the end but BA's approach was that there was a press release about it that one time so everyone should know surely?! As Cancun was one of those destinations earmarked for the 1st tranche of reconfigs i'd be very surprised if you got anything other than the 52W both ways. You should pick up a fairly decent amount of TP's for the flight so hopefully you'll be a decent chunk towards Bronze for next time.

no2blues

Thanks, guys. I'll take a look at setting up an alert.

That together with the CE flight to Gran Canaria we have in a couple of weeks should take us both to 340 TP if I've got it right.

IslingtonFlyer

G-VIIU on her way back from SIN now as BA9178! Looks like G-VIIV is next but not till Jan? Also seems she'll lose her First Class as part of the refresh.

Forever in Seattle

I believe there are a few errors in the Wiki. The LGW fleet size is (was?) 11, not 18.
Is IIL and AES going to be converted as they had cabin refits in 2012? If they going to take 2 4 class out of the LHR fleet, move them to LGW after a refit, it would be the old cabin RR ones, as BA these days are *couch* tight *cough* with spending money, unless proper crew rest area is the key reason.

As a side note IIU/V/W/X/Y used to be LHR fleet but were swapped with IIA/B/F in 2012 which then had cabin refits with the rest of the LHR based 4 class GE90 77E's

Scotflyer80

no2blues

So, I've set up an Aircraft Change Alert just for the outbound at the moment.... but the Expert Flyer helps says the following:

"The Aircraft Change Alert form allows you to create an Aircraft Change Alert for a particular flight. An Aircraft Change Alert will periodically check the aircraft equipment code returned with the seat map of a flight to see if it has changed since the alert was created. If so, ExpertFlyer will notify you as to what the new aircraft equipment code is."

As the current aircraft is a 777 (with an incorrect seatmap) and will remain a 777 when the WTP section gets corrected (WT and CW are both correct), will the Aircraft Equipment Code change?