Interesting poitns guys, thanks!

So we landed late (BA49 seems to leave late regularly!) but could still have made our connection if it hadn’t taken 45 minutes for the bags to come off. A lovely BA rep was there who told us we had been rebooked already onto a flight 2 hours later, we just needed to present ourselves at the Alaska desk.

Things got a lot more stressful when Alaska told us BA had not transferred us into First for the new flight and that we speak to BA to resolve. The desk at SEA had already closed, as we discovered had the BA call centre in New York. I know there are threads on this but, seriously, why does BA not have a global 24 hour re-route to whichever centre is open?? We called London and Hong Kong, both closed at the same time as New York.

Long story short, we went back to the Alaska desk and threw ourselves on their mercy and we are now waiting for our new flight with confirmed seats in First. But I’m very puzzled why BA sells tickets with 1h 50m connections through US airports. We have Global Entry so were as fast as could be, but a 50 minute delay on the flight plus the same again on baggage isn’t so unusual I think.

indeed. I pretty much always travel hbo and certainly wouldn’t want to no longer be able to book those connections just because they might leave little room for manoeuvre where people have checked bags. In fact, I’ve frequently been in a position of being at the AA terminals long before the previous (ineligible) connection to my destination was ready to go!

I find SEA can be hit or miss and all depends if your BA flight arrives a bit late and gets caught in the rush with a bunch of other international arrivals/connections
The last 2 times I’ve gone through it en route to SLC both in January the connections queue was such a mess we were guaranteed to miss connect so I just dragged the colleagues and left though the normal exit and went straight to the desk. Right decision both times as we were on a flight 2 hours later and by the time our colleagues got through the AS flights were all fully booked for the rest of the day with misconnects and they got into SLC the next morning.

The connection time is reasonable given this is AS’s main base and it offers multiple departures to most of its destinations throughout th3 day, so missing one’s original flight due to delays in clearing customs can be handled by protection on a later flight. AS has 20 flights a day between SEA and ANC, almost one every hour, so misconducts can easily be handled, albeit not always in F given the airline’s generous elite upgrade policy that pretty much fills any empty F seats with eligible elites on the day of flight. This makes reaccommodating premium mis-connections a problem on all three major US carriers and this is the problem OP encountered. Beyond downgrading an elite that has received their comp upgrade, it’s an ongoing problem. At minimum, a pro-rated $ compensation should have been offered but it would likely be a pretty small amount given the F fare between SEA-ANC and the LHR-SEA J or F fare. When protection is provided, airlines expect the customer would prefer getting onto the earliest flight in the lower category cabin vs waiting for premium cabin space to be available. As well today, most US legacy carriers provide an enhanced economy section offering free alcoholic drinks, a better snack and more leg room which can be a partial substitution for having no F seat available.