Kwaz

Hi all,


First time poster, grateful for some advice.


my parents have to change their plans and fly out urgently as my grandfather is very ill and currently on life support; he's been given a few days at most.


I've paid to change their flight so that they are leaving on Saturday, and I want to book them seats together but the seat map shows no available seats - all greyed out. I've called customer services and they said all remaining seats are restricted and can only be allocated at the airport.


My mother is extremely distressed and I want to ensure that my parents can sit together for the flight. Customer services could only advise to get to airport 4 hours before check in and *hope* the check in agent will seat them together.


Does anyone have any advice for how we can ensure that they get on this flight and they are seated together? They only have blue status and are on separate bookings (long story). Both in WTP cabin. Should I do the online check in and get a randomly allocated seat? Its it likely they will be bumped from this flight if we don't check in online? does the check in desk even open 4 hours before departure?


Sorry, so many questions. Thanks in advance
Kwaz

Pilot37

Hi Kwaz

Welcome to the BA forum, although sorry to see your first post is due to a stressful situation. If you are willing to provide some details on the flight (date / route) we can assist you with details on how full the flight is, what seats in the cabin are just blocked etc.

Hopefully you get all issues with the flight resolved to allow you focus on your family.

Pilot37

Cymro

1. Turn up early, check in online, keep checking, and hope for the best. There really is no foolproof strategy but things are very fluid in the last few days before a flight - people finally realise that they're not travelling after all, people miss connecting flights, etc.

2. Yes, do check in early. In a full cabin as small as WTP, there's a reasonable chance that, if a couple cancels, misses their flight, or upgrade/are upgraded, there will be two seats together anyway. If you check in without your boarding pass, you should be able to change your seat.

3. More likely, yes, but still not approaching the realms of "likely." Just because the cabin is full, doesn't mean that the flight is. Even if it is full, there are always a number of people who miss connecting flights, cancel, or oversleep. Which route and date is it? We can check to see which cabins on the flight are full - you could have an empty Club cabin, at which point people are getting upgraded, not bumped. They won't tell you that three days out though!

4. Which route? Most outstations only open 3h before the flight, but if there are multiple flights per day, or at Heathrow, they will be open earlier. (Unless they're on the first flight of the day of course!) With no status, they can't leave their bags but they can certainly talk to an airport-based customer service agent, who will be more empowered and better informed of the actual situation than phone staff.

CrazyJ82

Welcome to FT.

If you check in online 24 hours before the flight they can choose freely from whatever is available at that point. As a start, this would seem like a better option than waiting until the airport four hours before. If there are no two seats together at that point, there's no harm in asking at the airport, too, in case other pax have cancelled or upgraded and other options have opened up.

windowontheAside

If you don't get 2 seats together when checkin opens at 24 hours out, then make sure they check in but DON'T download/print/email the boarding pass. As long as you don't get the BP you can keep checking and switch if seats open up.

Good luck and my sympathies to you and your parents.

corporate-wage-slave

Kwaz, welcome to Flyertalk and to the BA Board, I'm sorry to hear of the circumstances behind this, but greetings nonetheless and I hope when the pressure is off you are able to stay in touch with the community here.

We can only give generic advice, for specific information we would need flight details. What is very important to know at this stage is that an aircraft goes under "airport control" 24 hours before departure. So if seats do come up - and passenger movements are very frequent at this stage - you may need to act quickly. After T-24 you can do more with the OLCI process than the contact centres can do. I hope you got the agent to add the distressing backdrop to this flying to the PNR.

Being on two PNRs is going to make this extra tricky, but the point to very much underline is by all means check in at the very first instance, but do not download the boarding pass, download the app boarding pass, email it, fax it, save it. So long as you avoid these print style mechanisms you will be able to keep moving your parents around the cabin. About a third of passengers check in the first couple of hours, and with a bit of moving around from many of them then the options will recalculate every time for you.

By all means revert with more questions and details.

Kwaz

Thank you all for your helpful responses - much more sympathetic than the customer service at BA who did not seem to have any compassion at all. I suppose they must deal with these types of requests quite frequently but for our family, this is a very fraught time.


To those who have requested more details, they are booked on flight BA31 on 26/08/17, flying from LHR to HKG. I'd be very grateful for any insight about how booked up this flight/cabin is.


I've noted the advice about checking in online but not printing the boarding pass etc. I'll be logged on as soon as check in opens tomorrow.


Thank you all again


Kwaz

UKTony

Block on 60DEF I assume Bassinet positions so these should come available at T-24 but you need to be on the nail to get them.

Pairs 62EF,67JK blocked, threes 64DEF and 68DEF same.

Availability shown W9 so not full (or BA more than happy to upgrade).

The problem is the separate PNR's as TS will only work one seat at a time.

Cymro

The fare bucket availability is:

F4 A3
J9 C1 D0 R0 I0
W9 E0 T0
Y9 B9 H9 K9 M9 L7 V6 S0 N0 Q0 O0 G0

That means that they'd sell a further nine full fare seats in any of business, premium, and economy. (Not necessarily each, as selling a V-class fare could then reduce the other buckets).

A-bucket numbers are usually a good idea of how many unsold seats there are in First, so I'd suggest there are 3. In business, there are 7 unassigned seats (not blocked) in the cabin. Economy and premium economy are completely blocked but there are a total of probably 10 still unsold seats on the plane (it's an A380) before cancellations.

(It's the earlier flight of the day to Hong Kong so missed connections won't generally be transferred to this flight except maybe from the Bangkok service).

So while there can never be any guarantees, I'd say it's extremely unlikely that they'll get bumped. I doubt, with the relatively low number of unassigned seats up front that they'll get upgraded on a plane as large as the A380, given that they hold no status, but never say never. More likely someone else will be moved forward with them occupying the seat that has been vacated.

Edit: 65D may now be free in WTP but it may not be available for them to pick and paying for just one seat might not be sensible. Can you get them both BA apps on separate phones and have them check in using the app (or get a friend/relative to do so?) at T-24 on the dot?

Pilot37

Looking at EF - it is not a full flight, they have blocked out about 10 or 11 seats in WT+ to probably give them some flexibility on seat changes / upgrades etc.
The current EF availability is showing as the below with quite a few seats in a row blocked (i.e. 2 seats together).


BA 31
LHR 6:40p → HKG 1:40p
F4 A3 J9 C1 D0 R0 I0 W9 E0 T0 Y9 B9 H9 K9 M9 L7 V6 S0 N0 Q0 O0 G0

Jump onto the BA app / website at T-24 and you should be able to grab 2 seats together without much issue.

Pilot37

corporate-wage-slave

I think you need to call the Contact Centre again, after first checking you have been ticketed and that you can't thereafter pay for seating together.

That A380 is surprisingly full as this map shows, the non allocated seats are clear (just one) or with a X in them (a few). Now the blocked ones are tentatively allocated to passengers or being used for Theoretical Seating (full thread in Dashboard). Either way there are options:



Your ability to change this via the Contact Centre will change at T-24 or a bit before, and then you're in the hands of OLCI, but actually I'm reasonably confident that something can be sorted here.

golfmad

Here's the current map showing the blocked seats. I'd say there's a very good chance they will be seated together. Please report back with the outcome if you have a moment and I hope your parents make it out there in time.

Kwaz

I've called the customer services again but they are still saying that the seats can only be allocated at the airport and they can't override the system, even if they would wish to. Am I missing something? Also, do the 'X's in the seating chart indicate seats that may become available once online check in opens? Apologies if this is an obvious question

CitySlacker

Give BA a call and ask them to add a TCP to both bookings. This will link both bookings and Theoretical Seating will then attempt to seat them together.

Kwaz

Sorry, what is a TCP?