[BugAdvisor]

BA have reinstated free seat selection for bronze, silver and gold executive members on hand-baggage only fares from 14th June 2017.
This also applies to equivalent One World partner members; Emerald, Sapphire and Ruby.
BA also write that if you have paid for your seat selection already, they’ll refund the payment.
Nice to see some good news from BA for a change.

[Mark Caswell]

More details in our report here:

British Airways reinstates Executive Club benefits

[Flightlevel]

Why not free for gold and business fares 36 hours before, and silver and others paying 24 hours before? It hardly costs the airline, they only lose a hundred£ on ancillaries and surely the goodwill is a better investment?

[openfly]

…..will the next announcement be ‘BA reinstates free food and drink on short-haul’?!

[Defcon5]

Fat chance!

[JonathanCohen09]

Well that is good news for those who continue to fly with BA, too late for me though.

I will no longer fly BA by choice as there are many more affordable options many of whom provide a better service and product than BA. For Europe and domestic I now use easyJet and even after paying for my easyJet plus card, based on the forward bookings that I have made in the next few months I am already saving more than £1700 on equivalent BA fares and that is checking the BA fare for similar timed flights. For example to Madrid next week, booked on Monday this week, the fare was £73 and with BA it was £260 HBO. Another example to TLV at the end of this month booked a couple of weeks ago the easyJet fare was £360 and the BA fare was over £700.

For me, now, the value of the Executive Club and avios is no longer worth paying for as with the money I am saving I can just pay for the flights that I want to take with no restrictions on seat availability and so I can travel exactly when I want and not rely on the availability of reward seats.

I no longer miss the lounge access as I finally realized how much it was costing me and if it is needed then at most airports I can pay for it.

I am quite sad that after all the years that I have supported BA, more than 35 it has come to this but enough is enough, it is not the airline that it once was although I have great respect for the Pilots, cabin crew and ground staff who can only deliver the product that the airline gives them, it seems to be giving them less and lees to the point where a number of BA staff have told me that they are embarrassed at what it is they have to offer now.

I realize that my decision will not make one bit of difference as BA will not care that I no longer fly with them but maybe if enough other people did the same they might take notice?

Safe travels,
JC

[LuganoPirate]

Maybe enough people did stop flying them Jonathan that they did notice? I wonder why they did this? I also think they’ll bring the free drink back. We’ll see I guess.

[seasonedtraveller]

[quote quote=806007]Well that is good news for those who continue to fly with BA, too late for me though.

I have great respect for the Pilots, cabin crew and ground staff who can only deliver the product that the airline gives them, it seems to be giving them less and lees to the point where a number of BA staff have told me that they are embarrassed at what it is they have to offer now.

Safe travels,
JC
[/quote]

This is a fact.
On 4 recent long haul sectors with BA, I’ve been engaged in conversation with legacy crew in the galley where I have been told of their “shame and embarrassment” about this once great airline (some of the older crew members knew and some actually flew with my friend, a BA captain now retired so this makes the conversation more natural I think). It’s easy to see that crew morale is very low when talking with them privately (based on the conversations that I’ve had – can’t speak for them all obviously).
It’s sad but it’s a fact of life.

[esselle]

First flight on BA for a long while just booked for early June, MAN LHR. As they have now introduced “CE” on domestic routes, the nearest to the front in can get,even with my hugely valuable GCFL, is row 8. Ho hum.

[FDOS_UK]

esselle

Same here, but as I usually have checked baggage, I tend to book exit rows, anyway.

[DerekVH]

[quote quote=806144]First flight on BA for a long while just booked for early June, MAN LHR. As they have now introduced “CE” on domestic routes, the nearest to the front in can get,even with my hugely valuable GCFL, is row 8. Ho hum.

[/quote]Paying CE LHR/GLA in August (silver card) the nearest to front I can get is row 5 !

[FDOS_UK]

[quote quote=806204]

esselle wrote:

First flight on BA for a long while just booked for early June, MAN LHR. As they have now introduced “CE” on domestic routes, the nearest to the front in can get,even with my hugely valuable GCFL, is row 8. Ho hum.

Paying CE LHR/GLA in August (silver card) the nearest to front I can get is row 5 !

[/quote]

That’s probably because of FLY theoretical seating blocking seats for Gold card holders.

[Author]

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