Link two bookings to be seated together?

[dst87]

A colleague and I are travelling on the same flight but under two separate bookings. Is it possibly to link those bookings somehow to have BA automatically seat us together like they would for two people travelling on the same ticket?

I’d rather avoid us paying for a seat reservation if I can help it; unsure if work will reimburse that.

[NorthernLass]

No – and not even people travelling on the same booking are guaranteed to be seated together, BA wants those seat selection fees! If you and your colleague need to sit together if you need to work on the flight, you might get reimbursed for paying for seat selection.

[dst87]

True, though I’ve never not been seated with my husband when we’re travelling together. Even if it’s not guaranteed I guess there’s some consideration given.

But that’s fair enough. I think we’ll hold off and see how busy the flight looks and can always book later if it seems to be filling up. I don’t know how busy London to Montreal is in November.

[ZoeB]

Otherwise both be quick off the mark at online checkin. And be on a call to each other while you do it. If BA are still selling 9 seats (for example) in your cabin then you will likely to be able to find 2 together. Also watch the seat map as the flight gets closer.

[VinZ]

I think they only do when there’s a minor involved as they don’t want the child flying without supervision.

[mzb]

If you are BA Gold, you would be able to select a seat for your travelling companion even if on a different reservation (must be in the same cabin class). You’d need to call up (or recently have been using Twitter DM which is relatively effective).

[dst87]

Sadly not Gold. We’re flying economy (help… I haven’t done long-haul economy in quite a while…) so there are plenty of seats. Going to find out if we can expense.

I’m worried about coordinating a check-in because when I flew to Montreal earlier this year I had to contend with the horrible VeriFly app which didn’t work (apparently an issue with connecting flights?) and this meant I wasn’t able to check-in online at all. 😡 That was Business class though so it was lower stakes and, ultimately, we were seated together.

[NorthernLass]

When we had issues going to BOS in March we were staying at MAN the night before so walked across to the terminal and asked the ground agents very nicely if they could check us in so we didn’t have to queue the next morning as we were HBO and were hoping just to be able to head straight to security. We were in F so seat allocation wasn’t an issue for us, but they did allocate our son’s J seat in the first row of CS so he was near us, which was extra nice of them, even though he would have been fine anywhere in that cabin.
Also couldn’t check in online from MAN in July, I don’t know if it’s improved since then. We had everything apart from the kitchen sink on that occasion though, so were queueing regardless.

[tomahawk]

We travelled as a group of 10 earlier in the year on a family holiday which had to be on 2 separate bookings (BA holidays max under one booking is 9 people). They linked the bookings together in the background somehow, and said that this meant we “should” be seated together. I wasn’t enormously convinced but it did actually work and we were all seated together on the outward and return flights.