British Airways Seat Reservation

[Persnicketty]

Also... whatever happens in the USA you can be sure will end up happening here too. Law just changed on seating families on aircraft.

babble/parenting/con...er-on-flights/

Edit - seems the new law is actually now in front of the US Senate and the airline industry lobbyists managed to add some amendments to be voted on, including deleting the part which deals with the improved fee transparency and consumer rights section

[jamcat]

Wanted to add our recent experience flying Caribbean in Feb half term- as a family of 5 we didn't really want the extra expense of booking seats in Economy. I kept an eye on seat plan and held my nerve and at 5 days before depature BA allocated us seats together at no extra cost, same happened on return leg.
Flying to Florida in July we are going WT+, as the cabin is smaller I thought there was a much higher chance of getting split up so I paid to prebook our seats at time of flight booking.

[ERICSMUM]

Originally Posted by Persnicketty

Also... whatever happens in the USA you can be sure will end up happening here too. Law just changed on seating families on aircraft.

babble/parenting/con...er-on-flights/

Edit - seems the new law is actually now in front of the US Senate and the airline industry lobbyists managed to add some amendments to be voted on, including deleting the part which deals with the improved fee transparency and consumer rights section

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Isn’t that ruling already incorporated into BA’s terms ? They guarantee that children under age 12 will be seated next to a parent or other adult in the same party, without the need to pay to reserve seats.

[MrsMoney]

Originally Posted by John

For the return trip we were flying world traveller +. For the last few months, although there is only 24 seats in that section, none were showing as available, even if you wanted to pay for them. 2 days to go, two seats appeared in the section, but I still didn't pay for them. Following day I logged on and was allocated two seats together in the front of the WT+ section, so extra leg-room and nobody to recline into me...result I'm sure BA restrict the number of seats you can book to entice you to pay their crazy seat fee which you are more likely to do if you have young kids.

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Exactly this happened to me a few months back and I ended up getting a seat in the front row of world traveller plus which felt a lot better than Virgin’s PE! Very impressed with the space of that front row.

[Scotscraig]

We have flown with BA the last two years, 2 flights each way so if we had paid for seats it was about £100 each! We were 2 adults and our son who was 11 then 12. We were concerned he would have to sit alone but we phoned BA and they said a child will always be put with an adult and the chances are we would all be together anyway, and were. They say you can amend your seats at 24 hours before travel but this is only if there are empty seats on the flight which you can move to. My parents travelled with us last year on a separate booking and managed to move their seats nearer to us going out but the flights coming back were full.

[Persnicketty]

Originally Posted by ERICSMUM

Isn’t that ruling already incorporated into BA’s terms ? They guarantee that children under age 12 will be seated next to a parent or other adult in the same party, without the need to pay to reserve seats.

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An internal airline rule isn't legally enforceable though, nor are they obliged to comply. BA, like most airlines, say they will "do their best" to keep families seated together. And yes, they say under 12s will be seated beside a parent. In my experience they deserve credit for doing their best to adhere to this.

But this intention is not enforceable (and it only affects under 12s). Other airlines make nothing like BA's effort to treat passengers with consideration. Too much extra profit to be made.

So, as part of a scheduled transport funding review, US lawmakers are saying "enough is enough" - they decided it's societally unacceptable

And it will almost certainly be adopted globally once it enters into law.

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