SFW13

Sorry if there is an answer to this somewhere. But search seems not to be working and I'm so incandescent with rage that I can barely type.

Booked, this morning, using points and Amex voucher, two seats in F for me and my wife to travel to J'burg and back from Cape Town in November. So far so good.

Flight was wide open and was delighted to see that Row 1 was available for both flights. But agent told me that while she could seat me, as a Gold, in row 1, she could not seat my wife. I queried this. "Seating policy Sir, nothing I can do"

I eventually managed to speak to a supervisor who said there was nothing to be done. That was the way it was. "There was a queue of golds waiting for those seats" - clearly nonsense as the cabin is wide open.

So now I'm really, really cross. I've put �100,000 business through BA in the past twelve months. I'm sitting at 2,600 tier points five months into my membership year. And the one time I try and redeem my miles and do something nice, I hit this kind of inflexibility.

Advice please. Do I just shut up and accept the fact that rules are rules, and my wife isn't worth anything to BA. Or does someone want to suggest a way I might escalate this to register to BA the point that this kind of petty inflexibility makes a loyal customer so angry that they will in future take big chunks of their business elsewhere.

Cheers.

G-BOAC

This is correct. Only Golds/Premiers can get 1AK until OLCI - actual Golds/Premiers, not just bookings with at least one on.

Raffles

Those are the rules, I'm afraid. Many threads on this.

Its an odd rule, because when travelling Domestic or Club Europe, you only need a Gold in the booking to get Row 1 for all passengers.

Anyway, why do you want Row 1?! Too confined and continually disturbed by people accessing the cupboard, and not really close enough for a real conversation. I'd stick to 4E/F or, for views, 2A and 3A (which we've had on 3 flights in the last 18 months).

Look on the bright side. At least you can sit together in 4E/F. Many people with no status are currently booking Club World tickets using their own money for holidays, honeymoons etc and then finding that they can't sit together because they couldn't select seats at all until -24 hours, by which point solo business travellers with status have picked off a single seat in each pair.

Macspreader

Discussed many many times on this forum, I'm afraid. If you at all frequent Flyertalk it really should not have come as a surprise to you

Choices :
Sit elsewhere (I quite like 2A/K or 4EF for a couple - wouldn't take 1AK through choice unless the alternative was 4A/5F or something)
Play the T-72 hour lottery to move seats
Play the T-24 hour OLCI lottery to grab the pair (my last flight had a couple in 1AK who had done just that)
Get Mrs SFW13 up to BA Gold by BAH-DOH flying and then you can both chose
Do a Beckham and buy out the cabin, then sit wherever you like.

Actually, if you have tons of miles, you could keep buying up seats in random names as they become available, then cancel all unwanted at the last minute for a refund minus the inevitable. . . . .

LHR Tim

Unfortunately, thems the new rules mate.

We've debated this ad nauseum and whilst I tottaly sympathise with you and agree with you, BA ain't going to do anything for you I'm afraid.

Recent discussion has been here:
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showt...seating+policy

Your choices are:
1) Book other seats. Couples tend to go for 4EF on 747-400
2) Play OLCI roulette at T-25/24
3) Book on an airline that lets you pick the seat of your choice for forking out for an F ticket (be it miles or £££). Oh, wait, that's any other airline on the planet.

Abstract1

Mate I feel you! believe me Ive been dealing with this issue non stop! There is no way in hell they will do it for you (not for anyone). I managed to get it done once and even then it took 3 months.!!!!!yes 3 months!!! Ive been trying to sort another one out as well but its just impossible.

Thats why i try to use 777s these days just so that i dont want row 1 and so i dont have a problem!

It is strange as it is always possible i find to sort it out on the shorthauls but NEVER (apart from once) on the longhauls.

LeisureFirst

I thought I was bad spending about an hour or so on the phone trying to work out on one occasion why I couldn't change my CW seat from the nasty one at the back downstairs that I had been assigned.

I sympathize with your frustration, but which particular seat was worth 3 months of your time? You were on a flight to the moon?

BAHumbug

I sympathise, but in reality you have 2 choices:

1. Accept the status quo and play seat-lottery. Stupid policy, I agree, but that's how it is. If you do this BA will carry on with their current seating policy.

2. Cancel your tickets, use another carrier, and make this a matter of policy until BA rethink their current policy. They'll only do this if they lose business and it's clear the lost business is because of the seating policy.

I see no other (realistic) course of action - escalating might work on this occasion, but do you want to have to go through this every time you travel with somebody else ?

BAH

G-BOAC

Right. So we're supposed to 'believe you' that you've been 'dealing with this' every second of every minute of every hour of ever day of every week of every month since booking?

LeisureFirst

If you're going to try option 1, I think there is a good case for making sure that you are in adjacent seats prior to OLCI. Sometimes OLCI is broken and you won't be able to change your seats until you get to the airport, by which time it may be too late to get two seats together at all. I find this failure of their systems - or more to the point, their apparent inability to do anything about it when it happens - far more annoying than their seat-selection rules.

Land-of-Miles

As I found for my recent return to HKG in F, the seat blocking (of 1A/K) disappears at T72, at this point you are able to select these seats if they are available. On both my outbound and return flights (both full in F) I was able to get 1A/K at T72 and the seating selection held until final check in (OLCI outbound, OLCI mysteriously unavailable on the return so ITCI at HKG Central.

VC10 Boy

I'd suggest going for 1A and 4K. Then I'd be tempted to keep asking the purser to take a message to your wife and vice versa. They'll get sick of it and with any luck ask the person in 1K to move.

Be apologetic of course but blame the BA seating policy.

Pyeinthesky

Why would you want to to keep sending messages to someone else's wife

edi-traveller

I recently booked an AMEX 241 in F to Newark with a separate award ticket for my son and even though I'm a gold and the mrs isn't we got allocated 1E 1F and 1K immediately (777 not 747).

Problem was it wouldn't allocate seats for our son on the Dom flights or on the J class return - so when I asked the BAEC to link the PNRs and allocate his seats on all flights - they duly did this but moved us into Row 2 on the 777..........

G-BOAC

edi-traveller - AFAIK, only 1AK are protected. So on the 777 anyone can get 1EF (silly, I know...). Was it your wife + son in 1EF and you in 1K? That would make sense (all F pax can pre-assign hence no problem for your son even on his own booking).

On the plus side, good to hear they are honouring TCPs for Golds again as promised and not only linked your booking, but got you all seats (albeit with the silly move to row 2 too).