PUCCI GALORE

He's constantly on the run. Mostly after me.

Remember the Martha and the Vandella song "Nowhere to run" (well yes it was years before I was born as well but that is what Capital Gold is for!). There! Sums up my life on Flyertalk. Follows me everywhere - Continental (which he has never flown in his life) American (which will never fly him in a million years) even Alitalia which everyone should fly once before it dies and then stand before me and tell me how bad other airlines are.

Still he does talk some sense. Now and then. I see he has been entrusted with someone's washing. I assume that the HIDDYs are taking washing in to pay for his lifestyle.

Now I ask you - would you let HIDDY wash your smalls even in the teeth of a storm?

Quite.

Sorry was there a thread to this thread - ah yes. Seat Selection. Now there are mysteries and there are mysteries and why this one needs to exist is - quite frankly on Long Haul - quite ridiculous. It causes more arguments then anything else/ It is clearly beyond the wits of whoever makes programming to be able to let anyone book anything other than whatever is held back for Silvers and Golds.
Families moan about this constantly and I quite agree with them.

HIDDY when you've done the ironing run and put the kettle on - there a duck.

adrianjc32

Whenever I have been away on commercial tickets I have had no problem popping into the Hotels business centre and printing my boarding pass. Most of the world does have access to the internet, and those areas that don't mean that most of the passengers are in the same situation and will be assigned seats at the airport. For me it has not been an issue, and I speak as someone with no status and on reduced fare tickets.

Gaz

Precisely. In the instance above, the Silver card holder is winning with a cheapo ticket... but he or she has earned that silver card. Seeing as BA kindly give zilch TPs for discount economy, anyone who holds a Silver or Gold card has had to spent a bit of toot, at some point, to get that card in the first place.

Ultimately, you've never going to please all of the people all of the time. But I think BA's current system keeps those that matter to the airline happy for the most part. Sure, you might find buying a ticket v late that a lot of the really desirable max-FT-kudos seats are gone. But generally I've found even on elite-heavy routes, there's almost always a half decent selection available a few days before the flight.

PUCCI GALORE

What you lack in status you more than compensate for in stature. Word has it that you are simply wonderful both as a person and for what you do.

Koru Flyer

Remember that you do not need to print the BP at T-24. Just to logon and select.

Given the number of hotels, hostel, phones, shops (e.g. Apple stores) and the like with internet access you would have to be somewhere very out of the way or not so (e.g. Lord Howe Island) to have difficulty to find access to Ba.com.

Mark

Radioman

Ok folks, I have an idea, you could always have a "Fast Track Boarding Charge", you get a special not on your boarding pass and when your at the gate they will ask all the pax to come forward who have paid the extra money for "speedy boarding". Then they can all rush on the plane and grab a seat.

(Note: Unless like BGY its a bush trip out then you pay to get on the bus first)

You can always pay extra for a pre-assigned seat if you want, then no issues at all, unless folk take all the pre-assigned seats.

Or lets just have everyone sit anywhere they want.......

kered

Well we've given BA somewhere in the region of 12K a year for the past 3 or 4 years on leisure travel for "Mrs Kered" & myself in CW. Which is "A hell of a lot of toot"

However as our travel patterns don't coincide & line up with my BAEC year end, I’ve not been able to keep my Silver status. Falling short on only a couple of TP's last renewal. So now I can’t pre-assign our seats & our 12K spend is going to VS instead.

Agreed !

But there’s enough of stress & worry involved with air travel these days, without “having” to be somewhere in order to OLCI at the dot of –T23h to get your seat assignments. When just about every other carrier I can think of, offers this at the time of booking. It's hassle I don't need

However as Gaz said….

” Ultimately, you've never going to please all of the people all of the time.”

Which is very true ^

Unfortunately this policy has driven us away from BA, who we always really enjoyed travelling with & onto other carriers.

But TBH, we're enjoying our time on those other carriers just as much & in some cases much more, than we did on BA. Which for us is a good thing. While I realise that our spend was a mere drop in the ocean to BA, they have however, lost us as customers.

But I’m quite sure they’re not exactly losing sleep in BA headquarters over that one

So, so be it ^

bernardd

I'm sure there's always people arriving and leaving - I'm a refugee from AA who now get barely 5% of my travel dollars, compared with their previous 80+%. Individually it's not that big of a deal, though mass defections would be.

I think it's also fair to assume that a year ago BA figured high spending business travellers buying premium tickets were the key group they were focusing on, almost to the exclusion of all others. Since a big percentage of those worked in financial services and related industries BA may be rethinking their prime targets at this very moment.

thadocta

I think it is fair to say that BA came to this conclusion a lot longer than a year ago, judging by the fare classes which earn miles in the BAEC, which has been around for quite a while.

Dave

bernardd

Sorry, I didn't mean to imply this was a new revelation. It certainly goes back to Marshall & King, because I remember King saying in an inteview that if BA could fill the front of the plane with paying passengers it could pretty much forget about the back. My point was the events of the last month or so may have shaken their conviction about filling the front.

bcj1949

Can AA platinum reserve a seat? (sapphire)

The _Banking_Scot

Hi,

Yes you can ( you may have to phone BA for it) or there is a way to look it up with your booking reference ( i'm not sure how you do it but others might)

Regards

TBS

bcj1949

Many thanks.....this is a big help and helps decide on BA vs others for sure.....

Stez

I quite like BA system of T-24 hrs seat selection. On other airlines, I go to the seat selection months before the flight (eg, Singapore Airlines) and already there's a heavily fragmented seat map with all the good seats gone. On the day of flying, a good deal of those seats became available due to no-shows. With the T-24 seat allocation, the majority those no-shows will not have bothered.

Swanhunter

That is exactly one of the problems with BA's policy.