Advice needed after equipment change leaves us without bassinet seat
 

Hi everyone

I wonder if i could trouble you for some advice and any experience. I'm travelling in Y with my family on BA229 to BWI on Wednesday. There's been an equipment change from a 788 to a 789, and as a result our nice three seat bassinet position in row 20 doesn't exist anymore, and they've moved us (2 adults, a 4 year old and a 5 month old) to the back of the plane, where we will need to hold our baby for the eight hour flight.

No other option, apparently. Computer says no for moving the people out of the only remaining bassinet position in Y (the bassinet seat itself is free, but the ones either side are already allocated), and they won't upgrade us to WTP. I can't upgrade us because we inadvertently have a ticket that was too low price to be upgradable with Avios, and I suspect the cash amount (if it's possible) would be eye-watering.

There's reward availability on the outbound flight, but not my inbound from BOS on the 31st (although there probably will be in about a week's time based on how reward flights have been appearing), and the amount I would get back from cancelling my existing booking would be tiny, so it would cost me £1,000 at least to fly WTP on a reward flight out, and I can't organise it coming back.

Not appealing at all, in any sense. The only option seemingly is to split us up and hope the children don't need more than one parent's attention at any one time...

Has anyone seen this sort of problem before, and found a resolution? I know that we could ask nicely at check in if those people sitting either side of the bassinet seat would consent to being moved so that we could sit together, but if I'd paid £30 or whatever for a seat with extra legroom, I wouldn't be too keen to let it go.

It's all a bit of a shambles, and BA just aren't interested in sorting it, despite "having sympathy" for our situation.

All suggestions appreciated - I know we have at least got the option for the baby being in the bassinet seat, but if there's a way to make it better, I'd love to hear it!

I suggest you put one parent in the bassinet seat and get to the airport early and ask others to be reseated at the bassinet position. Worst case one of you gets the bassinet, you can trade off sitting there with begin at the back every so often. Best case it happens as you want.

Thanks...

I was also advised to call the customer relations line by the guy in India who couldn't help me...

Called that, and it says that they're busy and then it hangs up...

Going to vote with my feet from now on, I think...

I appreciate it isn't ideal and not at all what you booked and what you were expecting, but plenty of people travel alone with one child all the time.

Yes, I'm not panicking about it, but at the same time, it shouldn't be this way. We had booked so that we could enjoy the journey together and help each other out with our children. If BA are going to have to move people around because of an equipment issue, then fine, but they should be trying to keep groups together, and trying to keep babies next to bassinets. They've done the wrong thing here. I just wondered if anyone had experience of ways that BA had successfully dealt with it, or is it just tough sh*t?

BA will not generally move people out of seats unless they must do so, e.g., one parent with the children. Equipment swaps are part of life and occur on all carriers (except the LCC's which don't have equipment to swap and simply cancel). Looking at your post, I am not sure what you expect BA to do in this situation. It has moved two other families requiring a bassinet into bassinet seats. In the pecking order for seats, they should come before your non-bassinet needs. You are free to vote with your feet, but you are not being fobbed off, you are simply asking for what can only be done by inconveniencing others and in commercial aviation, it is about the best for the most. Either you sit together and hold the infant (pretty much standard on most carriers) or you split up and everybody gets a decent if not perfect seat.

Your options seem to be to move one parent + infant to bassinet. Other parent with the two older children to the back. Many people travel single with 1-2 children and it can be tiresome, but hardly a serious burden. But, you know your children and we do not. The two parents can also swap during the flight if that makes things easier.

Alternatively and depending on your destination, e.g. Washington or Baltimore or perhaps elsewhere, you could look at availability on services to IAD or PHL and ask BA to make that change for you. BA may or may not want to charge a fee here because it really has no obligation beyond what it is doing. Changing to IAD or PHL may have logistical challenges which exceed your BWI flight, so need to consider those in the mix before even asking.

As others note, if you stick with BWI, simply see what can be done as the flight approaches, at the check-in counter and at the gate. People cancel, misconnect, and simply no show.

first i sympathise with you and have to say it is bad form when BA refuse to honour original seat requests during equipment swaps, and your carefully layed plans go to ruin. absolutely should not happen.

I have a stopgap solution here.

Get 1 adult split off the booking.

Then come check-in (and please make your OH stay away and not be known to the check in agent) time, your 4yo and yourself (+ infant) should be seated together (as its BA policy to seat children with parents).
It does not solve the problem where your other half will be seated away - but at least it gives you that little more space, which in my experience makes some difference when trying to tend to an infant in a bassinet seat.

Upside: if you OH gets a good seat without anyone beside them, maybe your other neighbour will be amenable for a swap!

Permutation: get your other half upgraded (pts etc) - this should increase the chance of your neighbour wanting to do a swap

it would be horrible (for you and your neighbours) in my view to get the solo bassinet in the middle seat. it would make like a bit better if you could get 1 aisle seat either side. having said that, it is entirely possible for 1 adult to travel with 1 infant (and another child too).

I see what you're driving at here, but isn't there a risk that the OP will end up in a worse scenario than they are now? If BA have hitherto shown reluctance to move the other passengers from 30D and 30F, is there not the possibility that in order to keep the family together the adult+2 children will be seated at the rear, and back to the scenario of a babe-in-arms for the flight? From my reading, this is essentially where BA put them after the aircraft swap but now you'll be dealing with 2 PNRs, and the OP's partner may not even get to be beside them, which is the worst of all worlds.

A fair point, but the original post noted Avios upgrades were out due to ticket class, so you'd be looking at change+fare difference or AUPs I guess.

Looking at the numbers (and this is admittedly akin to FT witchcraft in terms of scientific rigour) I don't think WT on the outbound service is full. It's G8 and L2 which suggests quite a few spare seats, assuming it has been recalibrated for the lost of 27 WT seats on the 787-9. So I'm wondering if you get to the airport in good time whether you can persuade an agent to come up with a seat configuration which has an extra seat in the block for you. For example row 41 is completely clear, and the curvature of the aircraft and lack of a window makes 41A and 41K a bit of a poor seat for adults. But I doubt it would be noticeable to children. There is a family check-in area in zone A (far North).

So take the seat with the bassinet for 1 adult - when the people either side are greeted with (the potential for) a screaming 5 month-old they'll sharpish agree to swapping their seats away!

No, there is only one bassinet seat in Y on a 789. That's the problem. It's in row 30, in the centre. So 30D and 30F have more than likely been allocated to those with status, or to those who have paid to reserve them. The equipment change means that it's all change in the seating, but BA have moved 4 people who had a bassinet seat to a place without and the only other option is for us to be split up, and be several rows apart. The sensible option would have been to move the only people who had booked bassinet seats to the bank of seats with a bassinet, and then move the two passengers in D and F somewhere else... Then people would have seats based on their need.

My friend suggested that we should put the baby in the bassinet, and the 4 year old in the seat with it, make them angry and then the two adults sit at the back on the plane...

That's probably the best plan...

The people in 30D/F may be together and just trying to get an empty seat, so may happily move when faced with it being taken.

Unless I'm much mistaken 30E is already taken, not blocked.

That showed for me earlier, I assumed the OP had moved one adult to that location (perhaps they could confirm?)

Yes, by me.

In that case when you get to T5 Family Check-in, it would be worth seeing if you can trade that 30E seat off against a potential empty seat further back. There will be quite a few grumpy passengers on that service and they will probably not too far off row 30.

If there is an operational need to move people forward (from 24 hours before departure), it may well be possible to regroup your family in row 30. Miracles can happen when a flight moves into the airport control phase.

Also, and it’s a big maybe, so not to get your hopes up, there are three unassigned bassinet seats in WT+.

Why on Earth is there only one bassinet position in economy but three in premium? Sounds like a good way to piss off customers with infants, tbh.

That would not be allowed. A 4 year old is not in a position of either sitting on his/her own let alone supervising an infant. They would have to be regrouped with at least one you, and chances are that if the flight is not full, that will be in a place with space even without a bassinet as BA is technically not obliged to provide one.

Incidentally, while I understand your frustration at losing a good sitting arrangement in favour of a sub-optimal one, I'm also not sure why you would want to "make [the people sat in 30D and F] angry". They haven't done anything wrong. They have just selected seats available for them to select and which they consider good.

It's not necessarily quite as black & white as that. Yes, a parent with a baby has a need for the bassinet seat, and that is apparently still available, but there could be other passengers with a greater need for the other bulkhead seats than other family members, e.g. a disability or height.

If I were in those seats, I would be very grumpy about moving down the back for a family. Happy to move further forward.

My money would be on BA fixing this at the airport. Get there nice and easy, and BE CHARM itself.

Your first post shows anger. Don't take that to the check in agent. Take them a beautiful bunch of flowers instead. Literally. £12 in Tesco. A sensible investment.

In my experience, people don't get seats they need, but they do (usually) get seats they paid for (either in cash or by way of having status, earned through a good many hours of sitting in said seats).

Firstly, that was a joke.

Secondly, I wouldn't want to make anyone angry, but we have we done nothing wrong either, and yet we are at a potentially greater disadvantage, I'd say. We have a breastfed baby, so she can only practically sit with my wife, unless we are up and down handing her around for feeding and I'm pretty tall, so would often pay for exit row seats, but seeing as we got the extra legroom for the bassinet position, I didn't. BA had the opportunity to inconvenience two people, but opted instead to inconvenience four people, and possibly more severely.

Ah, thanks for clarifying! Sorry I didn't get it ^

Has BA ever moved someone who can't safely fit in a 'normal' seat into an extra legroom seat? I've never heard of it.

Ever? I'd be amazed if they haven't. A person with mobility problems would definitely benefit from being in a front row with more legroom and no one reclining in front of them.

I think you're being a bit quick off the mark here. I'd say that's a conclusion to reach when you get to the plane and find they won't help.

Have you considered that they may be reluctant to inconvenience people who have already selected seats until they determine it is necessary? Given that some people recommend booking a lap infant that then no-shows as a cheaper alternative to paying for seat selection, they may prefer - as they do with many overbooking situations - to make their operational move decisions on the day when they know exactly what they are dealing with.

I hope it all works out for you. It must be very frustrating but I don't think all is quite lost yet.

We have traveled a bunch of times with our now 11 month old (including a TPAC) and we have never been able to get the bassinet seat. He started sitting up early and we flew airlines that did not allow use of the bassinet once the baby could sit up. I would suggest asking for the airline to hold you a middle seat for the infant and get the 3 seats on one side of the plane and the seat across the aisle from it. If your 4 year old can handle it, the two of you sit aisle/window and then you can pass the infant back and forth or even put him/her down in the middle when you need to and then have the 4 year old sit across from you. We stuff the foot area of the middle seat with all of our bags so the baby won't roll away. Even if the airline isn't willing to move pax from the bulkhead, they might be willing to move them in order to give you seats all together like that.

This is absolutely the problem. The bassinet-to-seats-in-cabin ratio on the BA 789 is extremely poor in Y. It's also pretty poor design planning by BA.

1: 8 in F
1: 21 in CW
1: 13 in WT+
1:154 in Y (by comparison the ratio in the VS 789s in Y is 1:50)

Even on the BA A380, which has 300 or seats in Y, the ratio is 1:50.

Yes, not great planning, is it? Given where the bulkheads are, they couldn't fit any more in to Y, but it shows that the motivator is ultimately more about money than a holistic approach including customer comfort, but then can be demonstrated by most posts on here...

They could even just block off the bank of three seats around the bassinet until T-72 and that would make sure that whoever had the bassinet at least could have family with them... This policy seems to more or less guarantee that the person in the bassinet seat is alone....

I'm sure they are - All the more reason to not set up your plane with only 3 Y seats that are at a bulkhead...

In comparison to other carriers, the layout of this aircraft must be one of the worst for those in Y requiring a bassinet. The layout of the Norweigian 789s is similar (they have two bassinets in Y, but I think there's something like 300 seats).

To the OP, if you can't resolve something at check-in, I would speak very nicely to the cabin crew when you board. We were travelling in Y with a similar aged baby and boarded to find that the bassinet shelf was broken and out of action. Mummy looked very crestfallen and the lovely crew took pity on us and moved us to the empty WTP bassinet seats before take-off.

I've had a similar issue involving a downgrade after EQ change. The only advice I can give you is to get to the airport early and let human beings solve the issue once it's under airport control. Computers mess up things, because everything is based on algorithms. In my case, two of us were bumped from CW (bassinet seat) to WT (with no bassinet seat). I was on the edge of losing my .... when finally someone with a brain intervened and sorted the entire mess out at around T-35.

Do let us know the outcome!

Hopefully the OP will do so.

At the time of writing, ExpertFlyer shows every single seat in WT as occupied and 1 free/3 blocked in WTP. None are bassinet positions.

FWIW, either via a helpful check-in agent, or onboard via the SCCM, a possible solution might be to roll passengers 30D and 30F forward into the WTP cabin if they were agreeable. As pointed out upthread, they have done nothing wrong here and should not suffer disadvantage IMHO. It might also help the OP's case if it was presented in terms where the perceived benefit (upgrade) goes to someone else and not them and they benefit only as a consequence.

Be interesting to see what transpires.