Seat allocation flying BA

[Disney20152]

I haven’t read through all the comments but we flew with BA in August this year. Newcastle to Heathrow and then onto Miami and returning the same route. We did not pre book seats as it was nearly £500. We have 3 children under the age of 12 and were sat together on all 4 flights . Hope this helps x

[Iluvholidays]

This is the first time ever this year that I haven’t paid for seats and I’m so glad I didn’t!

I did roughly same dates as you this year and I was secretly panicking but everyone reassured me it was a waste of money so hold out and they were right.

My advice is as BA pre allocate your seats 5 days before check in and this shows on the ba app (as you have under 12’s) what seats they have given you 5 days before check in hold out until then, we were given great seats so didn’t need to change but I logged into see what was available and I could have still paid to change my seat to anywhere on the flight. Hope this makes sense.

[Raggyavn]

Originally Posted by Sew109

BA will make best endeavors to sit a child under 12 with an adult in their party this could mean across and aisle or in the row behind it may 2 children with one adult or it may mean 2 sets of 1 child and 1 adult.

BA are pretty good at this and will not intentionally split people but every year some families do get split up. In the Orlando flights in the school holidays there are more families so there is a greater risk (albeit small) of being split up.

If being split up would ruin your holiday book seats and remove the worry we always factor in the cost of booking seats and would not dream of going on a long hall flight without doing this. If you choose not to book then you have no right to get upset if you are split up or to expect others to move for you.

As has been said BA are usually very good at keeping families together but they are not under obligation to do this.

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This is the best most concise advice that you could be given.

Yes people will always say we didn't pay and got seated together, but there's always a risk, (in fact paying for seats doesn't actually guarantee you those seats either) but it would give you extra leverage should the unthinkable happen. Remember airlines can and do move people around (even those who have paid to pre-book seats) for operation reasons. You could even get the frankly absurd situation where a family who didn't pay to pre-book but who created such a fuss at check in when they found out that their not seated together been allocated your seats and you moved into their seats, even though you paid to pre-book and they didn't, but you have no comeback other that a refund of the price you paid to pre-book..

I once paid for a seat on a flight back from Berlin and was asked to move for a cello, I polity explained to the stewardess that I had paid extra to pre-book this seat as this was the seat I wanted. Luckily she
went elsewhere and moved someone else, who had also paid to pre-book his seat but accepted the move (into a middle seat).