Adam London

Apologies if its a dumb question but I often read on here that once you check in you should not print your boarding pass. Is it something to do with it makes it less likely you can get a decent seat change once you get to the airport?

UKtravelbear

it stops you being able to change your seat on line should a better one become available because someone else has changed their mind about where to sit.

umgowah

Would this apply to a mobile BP via a phone app?

theultimateflyer

Yes.

Bluesky30

corporate-wage-slave

Yes, but I would not leave it later than 90 minutes or so before departure, just in case things go awry somewhere down the line. But yes, only download/App/email/fax/print the boarding pass once you've got a seat you are happy with. About a third of passengers check-in online in the first 2 hours, so Theoretical Seating (see Dashboard) recalculates after every change. Consequently checking for the first few hours is probably sufficient.

rossmacd

It is worth nothing that many other carriers allow you to change your seat selection during the OLCI window, even after you have downloaded/printed your BP. BA seem to want to prevent customers having the choice as the seat map evolves.

Bluesky30

Ldnn1

Yes this is correct. I'm not sure if it is deliberately designed by BA for that reason, or merely a by-product of their system, but either way it's annoying.

corporate-wage-slave

What happened there was that we sometimes forget that BA were the pioneers of OLCI and self printed boarding passes. I don't suppose they were the very first airline to do so, but they certainly were the first large airline. When it was being implemented outfits like the CAA, DETR and BAA raised questions about how people could end up with multiple boarding passes and how that would somehow get in the way of security and process flow arrangements, so BA's response was that once they had printed the boarding pass passengers could not then switch seats. Or at least not under their own control, it would need the passenger to go to an agent and then they would retrieve the original boarding pass before issuing another. In the early days if you lost your OLCI boarding pass airside in the airport it would result in quite a palaver, now the agents just press F6 or whatever it is.

History has moved on, and even IB and VY both allow post OLCI changes - as do many if not most larger airlines - up to around an hour before departure, even if you are already airside in the airport. Given Ready to Fly and biometrics at T5 (and biometrics at some USA airports now) then I imagine changing this is not a priority for BA.