[evelyn]

I don’t think BA is being unreasonable.
Personally speaking, when I travelled on BA with my disabled husband I was always very grateful that they would reserve us BOTH seats at NO CHARGE. They also let me choose the specific seats.
So as a lowly blue we did not have the hassle of only being able to select seats 24hrs in advance and usually on longhaul we could bag the best seats.

[SGJNI1961]

Wouldn’t the last row in Y be closer to the rear door than row 5/6 would be for the front doors if an evacuation was required?

[mkcol74]

[quote quote=916419]Just for the record at no point did I say that I did not want pay or that we are entitled in any way. I am quite shocked at how angry people are on this forum, it is certainly not inclusive.

BA offer this free seating policy to passengers with a disability, that is their policy not mine and do doubt complies with the basic requirements of the discrimination act. It probably has something to do with equal access to goods and services. Some disabilities are barriers to people not being able to do things themselves such going to the cinema as they need someone to go with then if they are blind/partially sighted etc. This means that they have to pay for two cinema tickets just so they can go themselves. Most cinemas offer a free ticket for the carer to make it more accessible. This is the same as what BA offer, I don’t get a free seat allocation it is is only offered to my partner – the person who may need assistance.

mkcol74 wrote:

I strongly suspect your A320 Berlin experience was nothing whatsoever to do with disability and much more to do with the Club Europe curtain being moved back a row.

If you do believe it was due to being discriminated against what did BA tell you when you challenged them about it?

Did you also remember to report it to the police as a Hate Crime?

Yes, you are right it was to do with moving the CE curtain back. What you fail to understand is how the experience was different for a passenger with a disability than for an able bodied person. When we checked in online we discovered our seats had moved and we could not move our new seats (now 28b&C, the last row. due to BA seating policy even though we could see that row 6 was available – that would not have happened to an able bodied passenger. After spending an hour on the phone we were told that we would need to check at the airport which added to the stress of travelling and we ended up in row 28 C & D – still the last row – great for someone with a severe visual impairment. that is not treating people equality. That is discrimination.

Bath_VIP stated above that he is allowed to sit on the UD even when using his white can. Now where is BA health and Safety policy then. Where was BAs health & safety policy when they made us sit in the last row of ET?.

I need to mention mkcol74 extremely flippant and ignorant remark about hate crime. It really is an insult to compare this to a hate crime and insult to people how suffer that kind of behavior. Discrimination is about treating people differently and in this context allowing their experience of booking a flight and where they sit to be different to someone without a disability, a different race, sexuality etc. mkcol74 I have no idea if you have ever been discriminated against but I do hope it never happens to you.

Bath_VIP wrote:

farmerswife,

The issue though is the availability of the same service for disabled people. On Easyjet and many others, you can pay extra for extra legroom seats. Those seats are usually denied to disabled passengers because they are usually in emergency exit rows. So it is discriminatory not to offer the same facility elsewhere on the plane to disabled in non-emergency exit rows. Similarly to deny the upper deck to disabled passengers on spurious grounds is also discriminatory.

Thank you Bath_VIP for these comments, it is clearly from someone who understand these challenges rather than simply mocking them.[/quote]

I would be interested to know how BA treated your partner differently based on their disability. At what point did they say something such as “They’re visually impaired, they cannot sit in row 6 simply for that reason” as you have not explained yourself fully.

As for your belief that my response about reporting it as a hate crime being flippant, perhaps you need to better understand the law re: hate crime (which yes I have been subjected to & that I work with every single day) and that if your version of events were as stated then your partner was subjected to a hate crime. If you need to brush up on it then check out by clicking here then you will see it quite clearly.

What you seem to misunderstand is that I’m contra what you’re saying, I’m simply asking questions for clarity to help you help yourself.

[esselle]

Isn’t this “hate crime” thing getting a bit overused?

Surely it was originally designed to catch behaviours which were specifically intended to cause hurt or suffering?

I’m not sure BA are guilty of this in this case.

Perhaps we should create “incompetence crime”, or “wholly lacking in common sense crime”?

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DNAdams

[capetonianm]

It seems to me that these days in the UK you just have to look at someone the wrong way and you are guilty of ‘racism’ or ‘hate crime’. The tragedy is that petty accusations waste police and judicial time when there are real crimes (including hate and racism) that need to be dealt with.

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rferguson, DNAdams, openfly

[canucklad]

I’m sorry to say, but this is a bit of a storm in a tea up, a storm created by the airlines own greed ….

Bath_VIP and farmerslodge summoned up the contradictions very nicely…….

Firstly, the greater legroom is not an airline created space, it’s a regulatory created space.
As is the reasonable assumption, that someone sitting in that space can quickly and efficiently carry out a duty none of us who have been lucky enough to sit in those seats ever want to do.

Secondly, the airlines should be held to account by discrimination laws, simply because their greed in turning a regulatory space into a revenue stream is a morally corrupt practice.
What’s next, removing lifejackets from certain seats and charging non-swimmers an ancillary charge to sit in those seats who have life jackets under them !!

As for the Original post, as much as I despise BA’s seat selection policy , I’m afraid they have a duty of care to everybody on board, including those customers who alert them of their special needs.

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DNAdams

[SimonS1]

If I were the OP I would also be frustrated. On many occasions these “health & safety” criteria are simply for the convenience of the airline not the protection of the customer.

Re the 747 Upper Deck – I might conceivably have seen an issue until Bath_VIP reported that he used it when carrying a cane. And I see no reason at all why the OP could not have occupied row 6 on an A320 and thus not be confined to the back row.

When you overlay all this with the can’t do/civil service culture of BA you can see why it is all too much trouble.

Whilst I personally do not suffer from a disability I find the treatment of people like the OP’s partner reprehensible. All for the sake no doubt of following some guidelines put together in Waterside Towers by a desk employee who has never operated in the real world.

Sadly of course BA is not the only culprit….you only have to follow Frank Gardner’s tweets to know how contemptible Heathrow and OmniServe are in this area. Despite the platitudes it is clearly about meeting legal requirements at the minimum possible cost.

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DNAdams

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