Theoretical infant-in-arms
 

Hypothetically, what would happen if you added a 'fake' infant-in-arms passenger, qualifying everyone in the party to free advance seat assignment at the time of booking, only to turn up at the airport without the infant?

Depending on the size of the party, and the 10% infant-in-arms fare, it might prove quite a saving (and possibly get you banned by the airline)!

Hopefully you will be caught out for being dishonest!

Ha! OK, here's the 'honest' version, then. I book a r/t for me and three relatives, with an infant-in-arms ticket (my son) attached to one of the passengers, and reserve all our seats for both legs in advance, gratis. At some point before the flight we decide that our son should actually stay at home with my wife, so it will be just the four adults flying.

We forget to notify BA of this fact in advance, and arrive at the airport and explain the situation to the check-in agent instead.

I presume we would not get charged for our advanced ticket assignments for the outbound leg at this late stage. The infant-in-arms ticket would, I also presume, be removed from the inbound booking at this point. But would that knock out the free advanced seat assignments for the four adults on the inbound?

No, you won't be charged.

But, your free seat assignments will most likely be returned to the pool and you will be assigned seats from the leftovers. Depending on the aircraft and its load, these are likely to be, at that point the least desireable seats available.

All depends on your risk tolerance.

I suppose we could check-in as late as possible to mitigate this risk, or would they still shuffle pax around after this stage?

A clever and entertaining idea! I cannot see why it would not work. Is it technically fraud though? :)

Through what mechanism would this happen? Surely the passengers would present themselves for travel with assignments for 15DEFG and the agent would just print boarding cards for those seats? :)

Does the board think it is more dishonest, less dishonest or the same degree of dishonest as flying ex-EU and then ditching the last sector? :)

I don't know, call me Mr Grumpy, but for me this abusing a concession that exists to make life a bit easier for people with young infants, and the logical end point if it were to become widespread practice would be that the concession would be removed. That would be a shame.

Failing to see anything grumpy about your comment, which was spot on ^

I fail to see any material difference between post 1 and 3. Both get a :td: from me. A :td: :td: if you displace a family with a real infant.

If you actually intend to fly with an infant and then cancel at the last minute then there is nothing wrong with this. It happened to friends of mine who were due to come to my wedding. Infant had been ill and they were waiting for test results, which didn't come in time so mother stayed at home with infant. Thankfully the test results were negative so they could have come after all but it wasn't worth the risk.

Of course there is no way of the airline telling if you have set the whole thing up, assuming you have filled in advance passenger info, unless they demand a medical note. I doubt they would though.

Whether it's honest or not is another matter.

All about risk tolerance.

I doubt that this level of larceny happens routinely do it will be hard to achieve a good statistical analysis.

Alternatively, you could rob an old woman for her cash and use that to pay for the seat assignments.

Well that escalated quickly!

The big issue I see with this is as mentioned if it becomes common place occurance. BA would probably end the practice of everyone in the party having free allocation and become the same as Virgin (and I assume others) that only give 1 adult and infant the free seat.
A few rotten apples spoil it for everyone as they say.

Hypothetically, you would have deprived a single mum with her infant (or a couple with an infant) of the seats that should have been theirs. Everyone is responsible for their own compass, but very personally, I would feel horrid and frankly pathetic if I saw such an unfair outcome because I had not returned that infant seat to its rightful allocation as soon as I would know that I would not need it for legitimate reasons. Flights when not enough bassinets are available in view of the number of infants in the cabin are far from infrequent.

I'm not sure how you've adduced this, @orbitmic. I've made no mention of booking a bassinet seat. Let's define my hypothesis as involving advance assigning of four seats, none of which are bassinet seats.

And maybe let's remember that this is hypothetical. I've never done this, and I'm not encouraging anyone to do so.