Ford Fairlane

Later in May, I'm flying on BA for the first time in 23 years.

I'm OWE, and for three segments in my itinerary, I could pre-select seats online. For the other segment, the site and app tell me, "Online seat selection is currently unavailable, however you can call us to change your seats"

I've tried a few times, and after being on hold a while, the calls cut off.

The segment in question is FCO/LHR.

My original FCO/LHR flight was cancelled yesterday and I couldn't select a seat for it either. (I've now been put on the one departing 3 hours earlier.)

Is this just a random quirk, or is there just something about flying from FCO to LHR that has this special feature? I'll keep trying to reach an agent tomorrow but figured maybe someone here knows an explanation in the meantime.

sof_lance

In the same situation. I have a LHR - FRA on BA that got canceled today as well. Fortunately it was booked through AA and they rebooked a later flight but now I can't select seat. Calls got cut off several times. Dreadful.

TTmex

Ping a message to BA Twitter team and see if they can help. Will be better than sitting on phone

NZZO

I had a very similar BA seating issue last month for LHR-OSL. I initially tried to resolve it via telephone but gave up waiting. I was then able to use BA’s chatbot feature to get through to a live agent and had the issue resolved in about 10 minutes. For me, the chatbot box comes up at the bottom right of the screen on the ‘Help and Contacts’ page. I just kept entering the word ‘agent’ until it connected me. My first attempt didn’t work so I disconnected the chat and started again. On my second try it worked like a charm. I was number 2 in the queue and the live agent came on after a 5 minute wait. After providing some verification info the agent selected the seat for me. I am unsure of the hours of service for the live agents. It was about 6am UK time when I did this and I was using an iPad from Singapore. It was all quite painless, despite my 2 finger typing speed, but YMMV.

RichieMc

Not sure if this is related, but I have a similar issue. Whenever I have a BA booking with sectors on other airlines, there are 2 different booking references in the app (and then even a third one in AA app). Strangely, some seats are selectable in one of the booking references, and others are selectable in the second one. I think it is usually split so that the shorthauls (like FRA-LHR) are selectable in one booking while the longhauls are selectable in the other. Selecting seats on Finnair or AA are obviously a separate thing and are done directly with these airlines.

Ford Fairlane

Thanks for the suggestions here, @TTmex, @NZZO, @RichieMc. I'll start giving those a try.

Also similar to what some of you say: This is a booking made through AA, the leg in question originally had its own record locator, though it seems to be under the same as the rest now, and AA was able to quickly move me to the earlier flight,

sof_lance

The chatbot really helped me. Seat issue resolved. Thanks to NZZO

Ford Fairlane

I spent half an hour refreshing the chatbot with 'speak to agent' every few minutes, as it instructs. Then I got to an agent (a less experienced one, I think), and it took about half an hour for this agent to figure out what was going on, then another half hour working through technical issues to assign a seat. Finally reported success and gave me a seat number. But that was over an hour ago, and it's still not reflected on the site or in the app. I'll wait another hour, and if the seat assignment isn't showing on my end by then, I'll start over.

On the plus side, I guess: I actually got through to a human before being disconnected.

ETA: Decided to try 'Manage My Trip' using the different record locator that had been associated with the original FCO/LHR booking, even though that locator no longer shows on the itin with the other three segments. There, it reflects the seat assignment the agent reported to me.

So, yes, thank you, @NZZO, for the helpful tip. But it's still odd about the dual record locators. And here I thought Alaska Airlines was the only one with some kludgy oddities in their IT systems.