Long haul and baby bassinet cot
 

Hi all,
I value your input on the following.

Recently travelled LHR-SIN with my partner and 5 month old baby. After takeoff CSM came to us to explain that there were no carry cots loaded. CSM was very apologetic and because the flight was full, and the baby needed to lay flat, that baby took my CW seat and I took the crew rest seat at the back of the plane. I have to say the CSM was very apologetic and could not have been nicer to the extent that they would write up the issue. Of course, personally, this put a downer on the whole experience and meant I could not travel together (and provide sufficent help) to baby and my partner.

Anyway, soon after landing I received an email to say 'thank you for your email to customer relations' which must have been the action of the CSM. Customer relations replied 24 hours later to say sorry but cots are cots guaranteed and thats it. Seems a little unfair to me.

What do you think?

Thanks.

I didn't quite follow why you needed to move, but I had a similar experience with no cot/bassinet available in F. The CSM wrote it up, I received the "thank you for your email" email, and never heard any more. It didn't bother me that much so I didn't follow up.

Hi deeruck,
In F there are no bassinet positions, but in Club and lower cabins there are and which can be prebooked. In this case, although the bassinet was booked, no carrycot was loaded.
in this situation, either the baby has to sleep on the mother for 13 hrs (not realistic in my view) or instead sleep flat on my seat.
I am just annoyed that no carrycots had been loaded. For a booking made several months ago with a baby I think it is reasonable to assume at least one cot would be loaded!

We have a new cleaning company and there have been many flights where no cots/car seats have been loaded, totally unacceptable and should have been picked up by the crew departing from LHR.

In practice, what can one really do about this? I assume calling up the Gold Line in advance won't help. The best you can do, I guess, is ask whether a cot has been loaded BEFORE the doors close...(not that this will necessarily help, but at least you're not 100% done for as you are if you only find out after take-off that the answer is no...).


It's a big worry - I don't get how a ticket clearly booked for a lap infant into a bassinet seat would not ALWAYS have a cot loaded as a matter of course. I have paid for two ADULTS to sit in Club World, and I have also PAID (albeit only 10%, though on a Club World ticket even that may be several hundred pounds...) for an infant to travel with us. Is a cot really too much to expect as a normal part of the service? It's a totally different proposition if I have to have a baby sleep on me the whole night (let alone the fact that's not actually recommended safe sleeping from a cot death point of view...).


Worried about our trip to MRU on this front. If they haven't loaded a cot for that 12 hour night flight it's going to be a pretty poor start to the holiday and a very angry Mrs R...

This is not a true statement. They certainly are available on the A380.

Beyond this, you booked a lap infant. If you wanted a third seat, you should have purchased one. There's no guarantee of being seated in a bassinet position, so while disappointing I don't think you have a cause for compensation.

Sure - though it's the uncertainty that's the most frustrating thing...if at least I knew for certain whether there would or would not be a cot available, I could make an informed decision whether to purchase another seat...


At the prices when I booked, I might almost have booked a third seat had the cot option definitely not been available. But since it was, I took the lap infant / cot option. But that doesn't necessarily mean I should still be "happy" with that option if that turns out to mean - quite literally - that we have to hold the baby the entire flight!

BA are correct that cots/cars seat are not guaranteed but in this instance it was a service failure from our cleaning company.

deeruck,
I stand corrected on the A380 if bassinets are available. However this is of no help on a 777.

I can be reasonably sure that a bassinet seat has been booked as this was allocated several weeks in advance (you can only choose this seat if a baby is on the booking).

As for booking a seat for the baby, how do you go about doing this? BA.com doesn't let me...

Instead of booking them as an infant book for a child, I was told however to book my under 2 year old his own seat i'd need an appropriate restraint device so either a 5 point forward facing car seat or CARES/Amsafe, it's somewhat annoying as he's nowhere near the required weight limit for either

Not at all sexist. The baby could just have easily have slept on 'the father'.

In F there are 'bassinet' positions but these are contained within the F seating module and therefore only the car type seat is available for use rather than the carrycot. Besides, it is oft reported that many infants soon outgrow the carrycot in any case and is best for younger/smaller babies.

Understandable, and I also babysit my reservations very closely and try to plan them to make everything go as smoothly as possible. The best advice I could give is to just take it as it comes on the day, and don't let anything stress you out. We've had long haul flights with and without bassinets, and flights where the little guy was happy to sleep in the bassinet and flights where he wasn't. You just have to share the holding. (All my admiration to parents who travel on their own with babies ^).

With my daughter I did all flights before she was 2 just me and her, going to Hong Kong in May with her, my oh and our will be then 10 month old, flying with another adult sounds like a luxury!!

I have also done the LHR-SIN-SYD roundtrip in F with wife, with SIN legs on the A380 and SYD legs on 777. There are bassinet positions on all the planes in F (4F on A380 and 777) but on two legs they did not load enough cots, but thankfully there were empty First seats so my daughter got her own bed.

There is even a cot position on 787-900 (2F) but it is useless, since blocks out the whole seat, and my wife couldn't put her legs out.

A380 is not bad in F with a cot, but for 777 and 787-900, I have a clear preference for Club, rather than First, purely to (my wife's) personal discomfort... daughter is a bit of a mama's girl...