tuff

I thought I would provide an update on the “extra seat” position. As has been mentioned here you need to phone up as this can’t be booked online. Your request is then sent to the back office for them to provide a quotation which can take a few days. When you finally a book you are given a cooling off period of 24 hours during which you can cancel.

We had booked return tickets and were allocated the emergency rows seats 12a, b and c. However, one of our Executive card numbers was not in the booking and I entered this in. This caused the seats to move for some reason and we ended up in 27 c,d and e, across the aisle and obviously no use for the extra seat. We now have 10 abc going out and 12 abc coming back. I am trying to move the row 10 seats back to the emergency exit but am in the hands of the back room boys and girls.

In the booking the extra seat is shown as EXST followed by one of our surnames. The system prompts you to add an executive card number for the EXST. I didn’t try.
For those interested in the costs: a return for a human being (LHR-LPA-LHR) was Ł138.20 and the return for the extra seat was Ł91.00. Club was much more expensive.

So far the process has been quite painful. Hopefully the actual flying part will be a lot simpler. Will we have to checkin “Mr. Extra Seat”? Do we need a boarding pass? Presumably the crew will be aware that the seat is paid for and not allow someone to move into that seat.

I will report back in November with an update after the flights.

corporate-wage-slave

I guess this was for a Plus fare (not Basic/HBO)? In which case it does confirm previous posts that you can work out the extra seat cost by when booking, on the stage 2 / Price / Check your flight details, the Fare box will give the same price as the Extra seat. Taxes and fees are Ł47.40 but aren't levied on Extra seats. There's 20p awry somewhere, but doubtless it's close enough. Thanks for posting.

IAN-UK

Interesting - we've just had the same discussion over in the Lufthansa room. http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/lufth...a-seat-lh.html.

It seems that LH levies its alarming YQ charges on comfort seats, but leaves off airport-related fees and government taxes.

So not such a cheap supplement for comfort: the nice bit is that miles are awarded on the second (empty seat) reservation.

I used this facility on Turkish, travelling Y with a friend. The charge was cheap, but no miles. Sadly resulted in farce as our seats were separated

Flexible preferences

Did they offer to saw you in half as part of their fee?

tuff

A further update. Nearly a monthly since I started this transaction and it is still not sorted. Our outbound seats are in abc but not in the emergency exit row as requested. Overnight our return seats have moved from the emergency exit row to being split over two rows. How useless is that? Has anyone actually managed to do this successfully? It looks like I am going to have to on watching the seat map to make sure it doesn't change before the flight. I have asked for this to be escalated. Any tips from anybody?

cme17

This is a booking with two GC card holders - I really don't understand why they can't provide the seats booked - there has been no aircraft change. Usually we would fly Club but row one was booked so thought it would be a better option to book extra seat in the emergency exit row to get the 'club style' seating with decent leg room.

I really wished that we had booked with U2. Just back from LPA and outbound no one in 1A so got whole row to ourselves; return was in row 12 emergency exit row with plenty of legroom. Flights booked many months in advance and never had these problems of seats moved.

I won't even start on my flights to LPA via MAD which seems to have seat changes daily!

cme17

BA have now confirmed that you can't have an extra comfort seat and exit row seat. You cannot pre-book an emergency exit row as check-in staff must validate that you can occupy an emergency exit row at check-in. I can't imagine that by the time you get to check-in the exit seats will be available!

They have offered to refund the extra seat cost (we did explain when booking what we wanted to do and they agreed it was possible) if we want to cancel to secure an emergency exit row.

Takiteasy

Sounds like an incorrect excuse - anyone can book an exit row for a few or for free depending on status. You only have to tick a box saying you do not have physical issues. Obviously check-in staff or cabin crew have the final say.

Looks like they were getting tired of your calls and are trying to fob you off.

tuff

Well, it has worked. Outbound we have standard emergency exit seats with no extra seat. Inbound we have upgraded to Club as row 1 was available.
Obviously trying to book the "comfort" seat into the emergency exit causes some sort of problem.

londonsmiler

Apologies for resurrecting an old thread, but as it's not too old and a variation of my question I thought it best to combine....

We (2 adults, one 3 month old) plan to fly LHR-JFK next month, flying economy on AA to snag the main cabin extra seats for free, but booking via BA to get the BA coded flights I need to keep status.

I'd like if possible to book 3 seats for us to give us a bit more space when managing the little one (we're not planning to put him into a car seat on that seat) -- but I'm not sure of the best way to go about this, especially as i'm booking through a code share. I think I can see two options:

a) Book tickets as 2 adults + child (then later correct date of birth for child). My concern is that if the date of birth is corrected the seat could drop out on any computer shuffle.

b) Book tickets as 2 adults + extra seat. My concern with this is how you can manage these seats -- will i be able to assign MCE myself? Is it easy enough to contact AA to get them to do?

More important than cost will be the ability for the three seats to flow through to AA in a way that i can align them all in MCE and that we don't get booted from the plane /loose a seat in system updates or schedule changes.

Either way, I feel a call to BA coming on but haven't had the best experience with their call centres recently, so wanted to gather any information possible from the consciousness here before doing so.

Many thanks in advance if anyone can add anything.

JAXBA

Quote:

Originally Posted by londonsmiler

We (2 adults, one 3 month old) plan to fly LHR-JFK next month…

I'd like if possible to book 3 seats for us to give us a bit more space when managing the little one

You'll want to book two adults and an "infant occupying a seat" - they pay the child fare for the seat instead of the infant fare. You of course don't have to actually sit them in the seat…

You'll need to call up to book it but the INF date of birth goes in correctly; no need to fudge anything, it'll be as if they were a child.

londonsmiler

Thanks JAXBA - that sounds remarkably straightforward. I will get on the phone.

londonsmiler

Just to conclude this in case it is useful for anyone else in future...

Had no problems ticketing this on the phone with BA for AA flights, except for the fact that the annoyingly I was charged a call centre "service fee" of 30 GBP. I had thought this would be waived if you could not do what you wanted online (which is the case here as BA website will not ticket if under 6 months) but the agent was firm.

Only confusion now is having both "infant" and "child" showing in manage my booking, both of which seem to want API details entered on the BA site, but thankfully only one of these records seems to have flowed through to AA's system.

windowontheAside

The fee is waived if you should be able to do it online, but it fails for some reason. usally a technical glitch or similar.

If the functionality to do it doesn't exist online, then they are right (by their rules, not morally!) to charge the service fee.

Pascoe

Out of interest, as these are cash bookings, and mapped against a specific BAEC account, do they earn TPs? Sods law says not. Just curious.