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paying for seat pre-seletion - is it worth it?

PostPosted: 23 Oct 2011, 10:25
by hat
travelling Heathrow-San Diego in a couple of weeks on BA273 which is a 777. i'm wondering if its worth pre-buying seats, at least for the overnight return? does anyone have recommendations?

Re: paying for seat pre-seletion - is it worth it?

PostPosted: 23 Oct 2011, 12:27
by Petmadness
Great question, hat. We lew economy to Dallas this April and didn't prebook our seats until OLCI. Everything worked out fine for us...bloomin cheek, paying for seat selection IMHO!

Re: paying for seat pre-seletion - is it worth it?

PostPosted: 23 Oct 2011, 12:44
by diamon4
We flew on the same LHR-SAN flight in September and did not bother pre-booking seats and it worked out fine at OLCI. So my opinion is that it is not worth the money. However it was a very busy flight so check in ASAP

Re: paying for seat pre-seletion - is it worth it?

PostPosted: 23 Oct 2011, 12:56
by Alex V
We flew to dxb in july on a full flight and we didnt pay to reserve seats and it was fine.

cheers

alex

Re: paying for seat pre-seletion - is it worth it?

PostPosted: 23 Oct 2011, 20:46
by sickbag
We are flying lhr-Mia with ba at Xmas and I've paid to reserve 6 seats for the family. I'll be gutted if there was plenty of choice for olci :-(

Re: paying for seat pre-seletion - is it worth it?

PostPosted: 23 Oct 2011, 20:59
by hat
its a gamble - you could pay & they can still change the seats at the airport. we're in a 777 which is configured with 3 sets of 3 seats. i've only ever been on planes with a 2/5/2 layout previously

Re: paying for seat pre-seletion - is it worth it?

PostPosted: 23 Oct 2011, 22:52
by honey lamb
I flew LHR-TLV last year and refused to pay the extortionate fee for CW for pre-booking. Although on the website many people had pre-selected seats I held out and got the window seat I wanted. However when talking to the lady sitting in the seat next to me in that odd configuration that is BA Club World she told me that she had done OLCI 30 minutes later and had missed out on a window seat.

Earlier this year I was also booked into Club Europe and although a couple of days before OLCI opened there were only 4 open seats I managed to get one that suited me although for such a short flight as AMS-LHR I wasn't too worried even if I had been downgraded - with appropriate compo of course! ):

Re: paying for seat pre-seletion - is it worth it?

PostPosted: 24 Oct 2011, 02:49
by Sunshine
We paid to select Miss Sunshine's seat in WTplus as she was flying back from tampa alone. When she checked in on line the seat we had paid for had gone :0 She was left in a middle seat in the block of 4. At the airport we asked for the valid reason for the change and they couldn't give us one and said they would change her back to her original paid for seat. She was given a new boarding card.

We left the airport after telling her not to let them try and persuade her at the gate to change as she had a boarding card.

She was then paged at the gate and asked to change and she refused unless they gave her an aisle seat which they couldnt do. She said they put pressure on her but she stayed firm......that's my girl ^) She said though that she felt quite intimidated by the ground staff.

Once on board she had settled into her seat and a security guard - how Miss S described him - gave her a new boarding card and upgraded her to CW y) She said she looked later at her original seat and there was a family with 2 teenage children sitting in the row.

A good end result but just shows that paying for a seat doesn't guarantee anything.

Sunshine 8D

Re: paying for seat pre-seletion - is it worth it?

PostPosted: 24 Oct 2011, 07:33
by sickbag
I thought I'd better pay to reserve as getting 6 seats next to / behind each other would be harder than just a couple