BA charge for seat selection on premium fares...

[AsiaCommuter]

Just confirmed an F ticket with BA from BCN down to EZE via LHR the end of December (...lets hope they get a grip with the weather). Anyway was a little surprised during the booking to be presented with an option to pay 25 euros (or perhaps GBP cannot remember) if I wanted to select my seat on the feeder flight from BCN! A tad cheeky in my opinion on top the nearly 6K EUR ticket. The sector is in Club Europe (business), if it was economy I could accept, not a big issue but at least the F sector LHR to EZE I could select my seat.

Not being a keen BA flyer I had never noticed this before.....

[KeithMEL]

Times must be rather tough for BA. But I reckon these revenue raising measures seem rather desperate and short-term, and would do more harm than good for their premier branding even in Economy let alone premium classes.

Do OW elites get an exemption at least?

[Lobster]

Yes OW elites are exempt as I believe are people on full fare tickets.

[jjpb3]

Times must be rather tough for BA. But I reckon these revenue raising measures seem rather desperate and short-term, and would do more harm than good for their premier branding even in Economy let alone premium classes.

Do OW elites get an exemption at least?

Short term? It's been a while since they've put that policy in place. Their intention, I think, is to privilege full-fare pax and EC Silvers and Golds (and their OW equivalents). But the unintended consequence is to drive away some fare-paying business class passengers who don't want to put up with that kind of BS at the prices they're paying.

There is another exception to this, BTW: travel agents with special links to BA (Amex Corporate Travel, for example) can also select seats ahead of the OLCI window for their clients.

[HUGE AL]

That's ridiculous! Perhaps even worse than USAir's crap:

http://aviationblog.dallasnews.com/a...-all-of-2.html

[AsiaCommuter]

...no BA status. With a bit of luck this is the last time I have to consider alternatives with BA or LH as SQ will hopefully start flying to Sao Paulo direct from BCN next March.

[KeithMEL]

Short term? It's been a while since they've put that policy in place. Their intention, I think, is to privilege full-fare pax and EC Silvers and Golds (and their OW equivalents). But the unintended consequence is to drive away some fare-paying business class passengers who don't want to put up with that kind of BS at the prices they're paying.

I've not flown BA for a while. I knew they only allowed full fare and elite pax to pre-allocate their seats, but I wasn't aware of the option to pay for seat allocation. Anyway, we're on the same page. I was referring to how they don't seem to have taken a long term view of how cost unbundling policies like this diminishes their premium branding, and like you said - only serves to drive away passengers who aren't already loyal to BA. And I thought airlines like SQ and QF charging for emex pre-allocation is bad enough. /RANT