Turfed out of exit seat as BAEC Bronze

[Londonsteve]

Something rather odd is happening with my cash booking LHR-BUD. I’m now Bronze after previously being Silver and can book seats 7 days out, including exit seats on short haul. I booked an exit row for my upcoming flight (the aisle seat was already taken and nobody is sitting in the middle) and a couple of days later I get an e-mail informing me my seat has changed due to operational reasons. Logging in I can see that I was taken out of the exit row but not allocated another seat. The original exit row seat was not showing as blocked or occupied and I could rebook it, so I did.

Couple of days later I check again and without any e-mail this time, I find I had again lost the seat without another one being allocated. Yet again, I booked into the same seat and so far, with just over 48 hours to go to departure, it has stuck.

Does anyone know what is going on? I never had problems booking and retaining exit row seats as a Silver card holder. My ticket is a cash booking in one of the lowest fare buckets, usually I fly on an Avios reward ticket and make late bookings at which point there is usually an exit row window or aisle still available with more than 24 hours before departure.

[Stu_N]

I think there’s a few things that could be going on:
– There are unpublished rules about seat allocation on BA. Short haul, Row 1 and sometimes Row 2 reserved for Gold until T-72 hours, and better seats often held back for status holders on long haul and aren’t even made available for a fee to Bronze/no status passengers.
– If you’re seated near the front then the Club Europe cabin and its buffer can move back and forward until approx T-72 depending on split between CE and ET passengers. If it moves back to your seat you will be punted out. Sometimes the CE cabin can go back to exit row on A319-A320.
– BA are bad at preserving seats with equipment changes. Swaps between A319/A320/A321 are not uncommon and sub-variants of those with slightly different seat maps can scramble seating allocations even if your individual seats are on both maps so you’d think they would be unaffected.
– BA run a thing called theoretical seating close to departure which aims to keep seats next to Gold, and to a lesser extent Silver, card holders free. There’s loads of discussion on Flyertalk about this if you can be bothered wading through it but when and how it operates is quite opaque.

In your case I suspect it would most likely to be equipment changes.

[Londonsteve]

Thanks. I was aware of all those, to a greater or lesser degree. I’m flying in Economy on an A319. No equipment change since booking, there’s obviously only one exit row on that aircraft.

I could understand if I was turfed out of an exit row seat and it was immediately blocked on the system for Silver and Gold, but I was able to rebook the same seat within minutes of receiving the e-mail about the seat change. Same aircraft, same seat map. All rather odd.

Moreover, the opposite side of the row is still empty so it’s not as if people are clamouring for these seats at this stage. It’s a late arriving Saturday evening departure and now that we’re post school holidays, in my experience the flight will be half to two-thirds full at the most. There are very few seats showing as occupied on the seat map and that gives one a feel for the degree to which the aircraft is booked, I find my estimation is usually correct in this regard based on the actual load why I fly. This late departure and after midnight arrival flight is more about BA positioning an aircraft for the following early morning departure back to London which will be busy with passengers in transit.

Perhaps this is just down to buggy BA IT and nothing more complex than that.

[Deek]

I’ve been kicked out of 3 exit row seats in the last month and I’m Gold, the aircraft didn’t change from the original and I got no notification so I suspect the usual joyful BA IT is at play.

[Blair Waldorf Salad]

Same, I also got kicked out of exit row seats as a Gold. Was fascinated in then eyeing up who was seated there and whether they looked like a GGL (Reader, they did not…)

[freckles]

There’s something odd happening, that no one seems to understand. There’s a dedicated thread on Flyertalk.
I’ve been moved from row 2 twice (as a Gold), but as I’ve been keeping tabs on flights I spotted them and able to put myself back…..so far…

[AL]

I had this recently, and it turned out on arrival that the aircraft was empty. Rare, admittedly, but it might be to do with weight and balance.

Or just crap IT.

[pdwtrip]

Likewise, same thing happened on last weeks flights both to and from Paris. Had booked emergency exit seat outbound, checked day before – had been moved to a row behind. Moved myself back.
Checked in and had been moved back again; emergency exit had all gone – 10 minutes after check in opened.
On return flight – same thing again – night before check in seat had been moved from emergency exit; I moved it back.
On check in seat moved rearwards and emergency exit all gone – 5 minutes after check in opened.
I am 6 foot 3 so prefer emergency exit to club as get better leg room.
I am silver.
There was no equipment change.
There is something strange going on here – this has never happened before.

[bobthebuilder]

I’ve had a couple pre-booked seats disappear as well. No aircraft change or anything. Re-selected the seats, but it happened again, as per others’ experience here. Eventually, probably the third time I selected them across the week, it finally stuck.

[Londonsteve]

Since this is also happening to Golds it’s fair to say the only explanation can be an IT fault. BA would be committing commercial suicide if this was deliberate, and to what end?

The second major IT fault I’ve experienced if I may add, I’ve been unable to book reward seats online for over 6 months and have to phone each time, explaining the circumstances every call in order to get the phone booking fee waived while listening to the readback I can probably now recount in my sleep (I tend to book singles necessitating a separate call each time). I’ve submitted a complain to BA via their system perhaps 3 months ago, needless to say I’ve not received a response and the fault hasn’t been repaired. I recently ended up paying slightly more than the implied cost of a reward seat purely so that I don’t have to experience Groundhog Dog again on the phone.

[Annie]

This has happened to me at least three times this year when I’ve booked the exit row. I’m silver.
BA IT is a joy to behold.

[mzb]

Another Silver here who keep seeing his seat selections being removed (with no notifications), and no aircraft type change. I attributed it originally to subvariant changes, but it happens too often to be that. Poor IT, and I keep an eye on my bookings and seat assignments on a regular basis.

[NorthernLass]

+1, and no aircraft change the last couple of times. I went from the front row (2D on that configuration) to row 7 on my last flight!

@JDB dubbed it the “ejector seat” phenomenon, which made me laugh.

[MrWhite]

Maybe BA should rename it “ejector row” @NorthernLass and it might put a few people off from trying to bag those seats.

[slidey]

I had to re-assign a seat on a recent flight at 3 different times over a couple of months, always back to the same seat.

BA IT is just generally random tho. On a recent trip, in addition to the usual nonsense with only being able to get 1 boarding pass on the mobile app, this time the second person on the booking couldnt even get their boarding pass for the return flight on their own app as it just kept erroring with their booking details couldnt be confirmed so mobile check in (theyd already been checked in of course) wasnt available, so ended up having to screenshot the pdf downloaded from the website on the mobile browser and scan it from whatsapp.

[philuk]

Same here, equipment changed from 32Q to 32N and then back to 32Q. Had to manually move myself back to row 2 both times. Aircraft change was always the reason that seemed to trigger the change.

[Niall]

I’m glad this is getting posted about! I’ve had issues going back some time with no notification but seat reservations being lost or changed especially on LGW – Tenerife on BA euroflyer. It is not explained by aircraft type changes either as these flights are almost always on a321s. I could only predict there is something dodgy like more specific aircraft allocations changes causing issues. But I have to check several times these days to ensure my exit row selections stick and that is as a BA gold.

I’ve just had worse luck with BA’s dodgy seating. LHR to Cape Town tonight in economy, I decided to recheck my seats and I’d been pushed back one row from an exit row to non exit row. No notification. No exit rows seats available to pick online and unable to help at the airport.

I’ve also had a notified aircraft change cause me to go from an exit row window seat to the last row beside the loo.

BA response always that seats can’t be guaranteed but never anything more useful about why seat selections are being lost so much and why the reallocation of seats when this happens is done so very poorly.

[NorthernLass]

As well as the row 2 ejector I was slightly annoyed returning from a trip last summer when having selected exit row seats, on boarding we were handed new BPs – for row 36! I asked what happened to our exit row seats and the woman said “There’s been a change of aircraft”. I was like “What, to one with no emergency exits?!”

Fortunately it was only LHR-MAN, otherwise I would have been fuming 😂

[LD27]

Not exit seat. But flew BA today. A couple of aircraft changes but kept my Row 2 seat. At check in this morning was able to select row 1. No one sat next to me. Felt very lucky. I was 1A and there was someone in 1D. The silver magic seems to always keep seat next to me free if travelling alone. Long may it last. But not keeping my hopes up! Despite poor weather in London today, my flight left early and landed at destination early. Next flight to Madrid for Lima connection. What could go wrong? But that’s all down to Iberia!

[AndrewT]

BA’s latest joke IT ‘improvement’.

Today when checking in as a Gold card holder, not only had I lost my exit seat and been moved back to 17F (was fine shortly before check in opened), but it told me that as I had an HBO ticket (correct) my seat had been preallocated (correct for HBO but irrelevent for a status holder).

Far more concerning was that while it then gave me the option to change my seat, it did not offer the exit seats that Expert Flyer showed were still empty.

Apparently this was the new check in interface. Fortunately it also offered a link to switch back to the old interface (similar to when the new MMB was released), from where I was able to successfully reclaim my exit seat!

[NorthernLass]

I’m still showing as row 2 on my flight this evening but am getting the message that I can’t check in online because there are too many flights on my booking! (Previously 7 but now about 11 due to a cancellation and over-zealous rebooking!)

[freckles]

3rd (or is it 4th) change on forthcoming EDI-LHR flight (as Gold). I’ve given up!

[NorthernLass]

Well I still haven’t got my row 2 seat as I’ve just swapped to row 7 so the parents of a baby can sit together, though that’s probably to my benefit as well as theirs 😂

[Londonsteve]

In the end my exit row seat booking stuck but a friend flying in Club on the same flight was bumped from row 2 to row 5, again, for no apparent reason.