Booking a seat for an infant – checked luggage

[macy312]

So this post is a bit of a rant whilst also looking for advice.

I booked flights from Funchal to London for me, my wife and our infant son. We decided that as he will be 18 months by the time we travel we would book his own seat for him as he is already far too wriggly and I don’t think any of us would survive a 4 hour flight with him on our laps!

So I booked the flights online as normal (with him on our laps) and also added checked luggage for me and my wife. Infants get checked luggage included. I then called up and paid for my sons own seat for which I received a new booking reference for my son alone. So at this point I have my original booking reference with the three of us (my son on my lap) and a new booking reference for just my son’s seat. The issue is that on the new booking with just my son, it says that he only has hand luggage and no checked luggage. I was on the phone to BA for nearly two hours trying to understand why after paying (might a say not a small amount) for my son to have is own seat, he would lose his checked baggage allowance. All the SA kept on saying to me was was that my sons fare does not include checked luggage. This dialogue went back and forth for a while. In the end, the SA stated that my son is currently on two booking references, the existing one on my lap (for which he has checked luggage) and the one with his own seat (for which he does not have checked luggage). I then asked does this mean he can have checked luggage under the original booking reference and the SA said yes. He did not offer any further advice on how to two booking references would work and honestly, after kind of getting the answer I wanted, I didn’t want to ask anymore questions.

Therefore my questions are:
1) Will there be an issue with my son being on 2 booking references, i.e any chance of them cancelling him on one of them?
2) I’m planning on bringing a checked luggage for my son as this is allowed under the original booking reference. Is it likely that BA will try and charge me for this? (I’m guessing the answer will be yes knowing BA, but I want to know if anyone has any specific experience of a similar scenario).
3) Am I wrong in my understanding of this whole situation and should my son completely lose his checked luggage allowance because I paid for a seat for him?

Thanks!

[The real Swiss Tony]

My take…

When you go to check in, you can only check your son in once. So either as a lap infant (so you get luggage) or on his paid for ticket (so no luggage).

If you don’t check him into his own seat to get the luggage allowance, you could find that seat being reassigned.

I suspect the right thing to do would have been after booking him as a lap infant, to then ring up and buy a “comfort seat” which I’m sure BA offer. It’s for people of size or those taking something like a cello with them, but it keeps the adjacent seat empty.

And indeed the very question was asked on Flyertalk less than a year ago https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/british-airways-executive-club/2125394-comfort-seat-vs-seat-infant-under-2-a.html

[NorthernLass]

Have you seen this page on ba.com? There might be something about baggage allowance on there.

https://www.britishairways.com/content/information/family-travel/seating