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Do you know the cost of reserving a British Airways Club World business class seat?

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One thing that often surprises people who are travelling in British Airways Club World for the first time is that seat reservations are not free at the time of booking.

British Airways is one of the few airlines that charges its business class passengers an additional fee to reserve a seat – Virgin Atlantic, for example, does not charge. It also charges for Economy and Premium Economy, of course. Only First Class is free.

The only exceptions are if you (or someone in your party) hold Executive Club Silver or Gold status or oneworld equivalent – see details here – or if you have a fully flexible ticket.  Bronze cardholders and oneworld equivalents can select seats for free seven days before departure.  Some people also get the fee waived as part of a corporate deal with their employer.

cost of reserving a British Airways Club World business class seat

For everyone else, all seats are made available at no additional charge 24 hours before departure but by this time many of the best seats have already been snapped up.  In Club World, you may be stuck sharing a ‘double bed’ middle pair with a stranger.

Over the last few years, seat selection fees have gone through the roof.  On a typical A380 flight to Dubai, there are EIGHT different prices available, running from £44 to £76.  This is per person, each way, meaning that a couple is facing a £304 cost to reserve the best seats next to each other for a return flight.

I should point out that these are Dubai prices, for a 6-7 hour flight.  You will pay more on longer routes.

What does it cost to reserve a Club World seat?

Let’s use an Airbus A380 as an example.  Here is the pricing for the upper and lower decks (click to enlarge) for a Dubai flight in early February 2025.

Here is the upper deck cabin:

How much to reserve British Airways business class seat?

As you might expect, the window pairs are more expensive than those in the middle.

Here is the cheaper downstairs cabin. Again, the window seats are pricier than the middle block unless you want the two pairs at the back.

How much to reserve British Airways business class seat?

The price differential from cheapest to priciest seat is £32.

Interestingly, prices have come down

When we last looked at this topic 18 months ago, the prices (for exactly the same flight) ranged from £59 to £91. Today, the range is £44 to £76.

I don’t know if this is part of a general trend or just a one-off, given that the ‘top to bottom’ range is unchanged at £32.

Flying Club Suite could save you money

There is some good news.

Seat reservations in business class are becoming less relevant now that the new Club Suite is operating on more and more routes.

When we last looked at this in February 2024, British Airways had 66 long haul aircraft with the new Club Suite cabin:

  • 18 new A350s
  • 7 new 787-10s
  • 28 refitted 777-200ERs
  • 13 refitted 777-300s (which also feature the new First Suite)

This equated to 59% (66 of 111) of BA’s long haul aircraft based at Heathrow.  Club Suite is not operated from Gatwick and there are no plans to do so.

Since we wrote that article in February, work has started on the 12-strong Boeing 787-8 fleet with the first Club Suite aircraft now flying. Sadly our prediction that all would be completed by the end of the year was massively wide of the mark.

Cost of reserving British Airways business class seat

The old Club World layout delivers a huge variety of travel experiences since the dense layout means many people do not have direct aisle access, are facing backwards or do not have much privacy.

In theory there are no bad seats with Club Suite

If you are booked on a Boeing 777 and the business class layout looks like this:

British Airways Club Suite

….. then you are getting Club Suite. Save your money and don’t pay to book a seat.

With Club Suite, the experience becomes more uniform. All seats have aisle access and someone in the middle block is sat totally separately to their neighbour.

You can’t easily talk to your partner even if you are sat side by side in the middle block, even with the divider down, so it doesn’t matter much if you are separated – and other passengers should have few problems moving to help you if you are.

Unless you are obsessed with having a window seat, there seems little to justify paying to choose a seat when in Club Suite.


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Comments (91)

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  • SS says:

    It’s disgraceful that you pay a premium for the seat and then you are expected to pay to get your seat – highway robbery. It should be a free perk for flying business. Wouldn’t be surprised if they start charging you lounge access as well 😳

    • Gerry says:

      Qatars lowest business class fares already do not include lounge access.

      There may be others out there as well…

      • BA Flyer IHG Stayer says:

        Finnair Business Lite as well.

        But @SS you aren’t expected to pay. If you don’t care what seat you sit in then don’t pay. Simples.

    • Paul C says:

      You aren’t expected to do anything nor are you forced to. BA’s policy favours elites, if you don’t like it choose an airline who don’t. As BA silver this makes me more likely to favour BA, so it works both ways for them.

      • Rob says:

        Seat BLOCKING favours elites. As long as seat blocks remain (and these work well with BA) surely you couldn’t care less if non-elites pay or not?

  • Chris H says:

    We flew to Las Vegas last month in Club. BA wanted over £100 per seat to reserve – and this is for Club Suite, where as you say all the seats are good.

  • Alistair says:

    I just booked 3 x Business class seats London to Melbourne, I had the budget to go with whomever I wanted and I actually wanted to go with BA, I like the club world suites. But I just wont be bent over when i’m paying over £5000 per ticket to pay more for a window seat. Its just stupid, Ryanair on a £50 ticket, yes, I get it. But for a premium brand im just not having it. Total cost nearly £16k and I went with Emirates.

    • smitrax says:

      Instead of asking people to pay as an option at the end of the booking process they should just offer different priced seats at the beginning. In your example, the window seats might be £5,050 and the middle say £5,000.

      Probably a good reason it doesn’t work this way though. I just can’t think of it.

      • BA Flyer IHG Stayer says:

        Because you’d then have to have a complicated arrangement to refund status holders who don’t pay for seat reservations.

      • Jack says:

        Because how do they offer such pricing via third party resellers/travel agents

    • Gerry says:

      I’d prefer any random CS seat on BA to a seat I can select for free on EK. And that would be on an A380, but Melbourne also gets the 777s with 2-3-2 in business class which is an embarrassingly poor product.

      Also, a single round trip London to Melbourne in J can give you enough tier points for silver status so you don’t need to worry about seat selection fees anymore.

      Not defending BA, but I won’t pretend all airlines are the same and pick an inferior product just because of BA’s seat selection fees.

      • MGW says:

        “Also, a single round trip London to Melbourne in J can give you enough tier points for silver status so you don’t need to worry about seat selection fees anymore.”
        @Gerry, Yes, presumably 540-ish TPs from LON or 620 if travelling from the regions. But unless you had already accumulated a lot of TPs before the trip you would not get the status until after you returned from Melbourne so no free seat selection for that trip only for subsequent trips.

        • Gerry says:

          BA doesn’t fly to Melbourne so I assumed LHR-SIN-SYD-MEL routing.

          In any case, would I pick Emirates’ substandard product (and useless FF program with astronomical “taxes and fees”) just because of the seat selection fee? No. Plenty of other good carriers on the Kangaroo route.

          • MGW says:

            Which does not change the point that you would not get the status to which you refer until after the trip was completed.

    • Paul C says:

      BA over QR!?

  • OxfordDoc says:

    I suppose these seat reservation costs are considerably cheaper than the ‘have a baby’ option that we have opted for!

    Worth noting free seat reservations if you have a baby under 2 travelling with you!

  • Novice says:

    I recently chose my seats in advance to HKG for free. It was reward booking though using Barclays voucher and points. I chose the seats months in advance.

  • Linda says:

    At all costs avoid Seat 50B on the upper deck of BA’S Airbus. Other passengers literally tread on your toes, and flap the curtain over you, en route to the toilet. The crew’s response was that next time I would know to avoid Seat 50B!

  • Simon says:

    I recently paid £138 each seat for my wife and I on an outgoing flight from Heathrow to Singapore. My wife’s seat stuck in the reclined position after about 4 hours, so she had to sit upright with her feet up for the rest of the 13 hour flight. We didn’t bother paying to reserve seats on the return flight and we got allocated seats positioned right behind the toilet. Nice. Unbelievably, my wife’s seat suffered with the same issue on the return journey, at least that problem was free !!

  • Michael Buckley says:

    I made a mistake to book flights on BA to Los Angeles. Outbound flight was on BA and return was on AA! Our return flight was delayed and arrived back 3 hours 1 minutes at London LHR. Only to be told AA Flight don’t pay delayed compensation for flight delays as it’s not a EU or UK Airline!
    BA didn’t show on their website that their code share partner was responsible of this .

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