chances of being moved to an earlier flight
 

just booked flights to Miami in the summer and home from Orlando.

4 flying J using avios and companion voucher x2

On the way home from Orlando we could only get 2x seats on separate flights 2 hours apart so we are flying back separately.

If we turn up at the airport for the return and they have available seats on the earlier flight would they consider moving us?

Obviously I realise what we have booked and are expecting to fly back separately- just wanted some thoughts.

I would say there is virtually no chance of the happening. BA (and other European airlines) don't really do they standby thing. If you call BA they'll invite you to pay for seats!

Only if it suits them. I did this with BD on the GLA-LHR route on a couple of occasions in the good old days when the lowest fares were more expensive than they are now.

0 chances, unless for operational reasons they are overbooked and you are effectively doing them a favour by changing flights.

I think the only way this might happen is if there are IRROPS and BA is willing to be flexible in order to help itself. I had this once at IAD where flights were delayed and when checking in at the desk I was offered the option of the earlier flight as the flight I was booked on was delayed and the inbound hadn't even landed. There was another occasion flying LHR - DUS when I was able to move to an earlier flight which was itself delayed and which should have already departed before I landed in London.

As @LondonElite says BA is not like, for example, AA where they will happily move you to an earlier flight's Standby List and then you have a fighting chance of getting on board - especially so if you are OWE and effectively move straight to the top of the list.

On the day I cannot see it happening unless there is an overbooked service, and you won't know that until 2 hours (or less) before the flight in question. Being on an Avios ticket won't help at the airport either.

Your better options, all ahead of travel, are
- if there is a change in the timings of the flights you may be able to move to another service, ahead of travel
- with a long time before travel, keep an eye on both services to see if more seats come up at some point, then you can call up, pay the change fee and move over
- in the same vein, if you are flexible between MCO, FLL (in particular), MIA and TPA then something may come up
- slightly more hassle is to return via JFK, simply because the number of flights means the chances of 4 seats coming up are higher. However the 2-4-1 won't cover the AA service to JFK.

thanks for all your responses and advice.

Although not long haul, I landed at LHR the other day and enquired if it would be possible to move to the earlier fight up to Manchester rather than wait three hours in the lounge. The cost - an eye watering £1880! to change. Err no thanks. It was £280 to buy a new ticket, still NO.

Its one of BA's oddities, the answer will be no.

I've arrived 9hrs before a busy flight before (connecting separately, hence the big time gap) and BA will risk noshows rather than moving a proactive flyer making a change request.

They offered to accommodate with a change fee and fare difference, of course, at a huge sum. Obviously I declined, had breakfast and lunch in the Cathay lounge, slept on the secret sofa for 4hrs, grabbed a shower. And even after all of that - at further cost to BA somewhere along the line - the busy flight had to bump pax anyway.

Could have been simply solved by moving me at my request 9-ish hours earlier. But it's not the airline's business practice.
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It's only a secret if you are not a snorer! :D

I expect that the airline will have a pretty good idea of how much money it costs to adhere to this because things occasionally go wrong later in the day; and how much money it costs to dish out free time changes on request because passengers stop buying the tickets with the flexibility they need and instead rely on being given that facility for free on the day. Moreover, I expect that the airline will have done these sums quite carefully before introducing new products like short-haul Plus fares.

On this topic as with most others, we passengers only have anecdotes; in contrast, the airline has data.

Virtually every time someone on here says in threads similar to this that BA moved them to a different flight for free (other than where allowed for in the T&Cs) it has involved some sort of irrops be it weather, mechanical, overbooking or a last minute change in plane type where is has benefited BA to move the passenger (so they don't have to downgrade them or pay for hotel etc).

Any benefit the passenger gets (aside from thinking BA is wonderful for moving them) is, as far as BA is concerned, purely incidental.

Disagree completely. Like any large organization, there are different pockets from where money comes, and to which money goes. One pocket cares not if another pocket is full or empty.

The best example is the federal government, where many agencies splurge at year's end to "waste" all their budget for that year so they get allocated the same amount the next year.

(I find it funny that many FTers ascribe to the "it is more likely ignorance/negligence than maleficence" but somehow think organizations like BA are the most brilliant financially in the world. If logically they are made of humans, who as noted above as obvious stupid, how is it somehow you put a bunch of them together and somehow these aforementioned humans become brilliant?)

Keep an eye out for more redemption seats being released so that you can pro-actively switch flights yourself, which may or may not happen. You can set up an alert on baredemptionfinder.com and on Expert Flyer.

If that were true at BA, then we'd be more likely to see something completely different from that which is being reported: the airport "silo" would be keen to get passengers out as soon as they arrive at the airport, in case something goes wrong later; and never mind what the revenue management "silo" might think about the longer-term effects. As so many posts on this topic point out, it's counter-intuitive for the airport to refuse to help the passenger who turns up early. So why do airports do it?

Airports say no to passengers because they have been told to do so. Setting such policies is in theory the job of management levels above the various different "pockets" you mention, working out what is better when balancing the different demands of the various different "pockets". When you see one area (airports) acting in a way which is contrary to their short-term interests (ie saying no to passengers even though it may store up trouble for the airport later in the day), it seems to me likely that this shows that those higher levels of management are doing that job and giving instructions accordingly.

There are many uncomplimentary things that can be said about senior levels of BA management. But the past few years have demonstrated one thing: they know how to make this machine make money, even though some of the decisions that they have made have been unpopular with their customers.