FamilyOf6

Having read a number of threads on here, i understand that the risk of a downgrade from J to W (or Y) is considered low. However...
I have a 241 booking later this year - start of W21 season. Caribbean route out of LGW. As we were only able to get J seats outbound, there is a bit of cash left from the lower surcharges on our economy return. This is a rare treat for us to get away without the kids, so we're not anticipating on doing this for another 10 years!

Seats 1J and K have recently become available, but my wife is reluctant to pay to reserve seats, but I'm sure she wont be happy if we aren't seated together!

I appreciate only I can make the decision as to whether to book them, but please see my line of thinking below.

Pros:
We know we'd have seats together, albeit we were thinking a centre pair may be preferable.
We'd get served early with our first choice of mains.
We'd reduce risk of disappointment of being downgraded???

Cons:
£220 is a lot of money to reserve seats and I could treat Mrs Fo6 to some nice holiday clothes instead.
4 E(bassinet? blocked), F and G are still available, as are 4B and D (across the aisle not so great) - so we could still be seated together.
Summer flights have been re-routed, so a chance this could carry forwards into winter, which could mean seat changes anyway, I gather there are no refunds available.

So- can anybody confirm if having paid for seats (or selected special meals as one of us might) has any bearing on likelihood of downgrade.
Is the J cabin oversold less frequently on leisure routes than business?

pogonation

Chance of downgrade would be incredibly low. In the very rare event that it happened, it would happen on the day. As far as I am aware there is no evidence of a paid seat selection making you less likely to be downgraded.

I would save the cash and check in at exactly 24hours. I would use some of the money to pay for an EF subscription and put seat alerts on the return sector so if 2 seats are released in U Class you get alerted straight away and can make the swap.

corporate-wage-slave

In the good old days, when occasionally there were downgrades, then yes, holding a seat reservation did reduce the chance of a downgrade to a limited extent. Those without status and without a pre-allocated seat were most at risk of this, along with late bookers. Now bear in mind that downgrades are far rarer than upgrades,and that even T5 would go days on end without downgrading anyone.

However a far bigger risk is that there is some sort of equipment change that means that you can't have your advertised seats anyway, particularly since the situation at LGW is far from confirmed. And the idea of travel picking up to this sort of extent will be BA's biggest fantasy, but an unlikely one. More people miss their flights by being late at the airport or forgetting their passport. So if this was a genuine worry you would be better off buying a hotel for the night before departure, that would be a more realistic approach to risk than downgrades from oversales.

FamilyOf6

Thanks both for the advice and reassurance.

corporate-wage-slave , we do have the Hilton booked at LGW - the last time we flew long-haul, my wife was up all night packing and it wasn't a relaxing start to the holiday. I'd like us to have time to enjoy breakfast in the lounge, albeit likely the third-party one.

pogonation Good idea about the ExpertFlyer sub, I've been playing with RFF alerts already, though it has been a bit flaky. I am pessimistic about our return date becoming available- it seems to be a busy weekend. Even the remaining Y reward seats have gone on my route... but will keep an eye out.
I even looked at routes home via BGI, JFK, YYZ or MIA - all connections too tight to be workable and absolutely no reward availability anyway.

Boeing77W

Taking a look at the criteria that FLY uses to calculate who are the unlucky ones, paid seat reservations don’t come into play.

Definitas

In my experience cabin crew will do their best to seat you together and will go as far as asking other passengers to move to accommodate you if at all possible so you would be unlucky to be separated.

Jagboi

Are you able to share what some of the relevant criteria are? I'm assuming passenger status, fare class and when purchased? Would point of sale be relevant, eg. Expedia vs BA's website?

KARFA

Top of the list - people who ask too many questions

rockflyertalk

If you’re booked into the Hilton, you may want to consider the Executive Rooms, they can often be available as a cash upgrade or Hilton Status. These rooms are in a building that’s a bit of a distance from reception (internal) but it’s a more modern building and I find it quieter. There is a Exec Lounge (or was) that might be better for the morning, you can luggage n bits in the room before leaving, having been fed and watered.

Others might be able to confirm the lounge or hotel status as I personally haven’t visited since pre-Covid. Hence the was rather than is. overall a good hotel for being at the airport, pre-flight.

firstlight

I think the advice to set up alerts to check for reward availability is a good one and worth spending the monthly subscription fee for the instant alerts rather than spending it booking seats.

Having been avios / companion voucher rich pre-pandemic, we have several avios reward bookings in premium classes that we may not use - essentially they are providing us overlapping bookings so we can go to one or the other destination depending on COVID status. Book with confidence on BAH also allows us to have several 'maybe' bookings with very low deposits needed.
In some cases we have a BAH booking and an avios booking on the same plane to the same destination which of course will need to get resolved - depending on tier point calculations for our next earning year and how BA decide to continue to extend status. From August we need to start earning TP's and likely restored thresholds.

I'm sure we are not the only ones doing this, and once the situation stabilises we will review and cull parallel bookings so I think there's a fair chance of premium reward inventory reappearing at relatively late notice.

Boeing77W

I’m afraid I can’t.

JessicaB

I travel to the Caribbean all the time (LGW > PUJ) always in J so I have a good idea of how things work on those 777 LGW routes. Pretty much every flight there is a couple who didn't pre-book their seats and end up sitting miles apart and it's quite normal for them to be stuck that way for the flight. There are basically only 3 decent seat pairs to pre-book for couples, the "wendy house" as I call them in rows 1, 2 and 3. (The pair in row 4 is the best of the best as it has direct aisle access, but you can never ever book those as there is a bassinet and they never seem to release those seats for pre-booking). After that the pairs on each side of the cabin (A, B and J,K) are OK for a couple but you're obviously facing each other with a divider in between. And any solo travellers prefer the window seats in any case which reduces the availability of these pairs. Given the amount of couples who travel on these Caribbean routes, IMO it is unlikely that if you leave things until the last minute you will get anything other than an "across the aisle" pair if you're lucky. If it's important to you to be sitting together, then IMO it is probably worth booking and paying the extra. Or if not, just accept the fact that you'll probably spend most of the flight watching films or sleeping and you're going to spend the rest of the holiday together, so it's not a great ordeal if you're seated apart.

FamilyOf6

Well, it was looking like a unanimous opinion until JessicaB shared her experience! I will give it some thought. I've had a play around with ExpertFlyer today. I'll keep monitoring what has been allocated and fare buckets. I don't think our outbound is tight yet.

My main concern was/is the downgrade prospect, over the "not sitting together" one! If it comes to it, although it would be nice to share the experience, I think we can bear to sit apart for 10 hours when we will have 7 days of each other coming up!

Interesting insights from firstlight , I had no idea people would be making "maybe" bookings, or even, as you mention duplicate Avios and BAH/cash bookings on the same flight! Mind you, nothing should surprise me with some of the complex affairs on here!

Anyway, still a lot of months for things to change in many ways, vaccine passports, green lists, FCO advice etc to tackle first and also bigger things in life to worry about.

fruitcage

Exactly.... Despite what you might read downgrades are much less likely than many other things that are worthy of much more attention!