[morrislondon]

I do not believe this is specifically an Infant issue.
Sadly, BA Ground Staff in general work like robots and leave most problems to the Amazing Flight Crew to sort out on board, which on this rare occasion, they were unable to do.
As a Gold Member for over 10 years, I have never had any joy from BA Ground Staff on any matter.

[acireale]

MorrisLondon, I completely agree. This is my experience too. Great Cabin crew, poor ground staff.

Martyn, yes I would propose the same solution if BA double booked the cot in economy too.

[MartynSinclair]

“I also tried to organize ahead of time by booking the cot seat so I do not know what else I coudl have done”

Here are two choices, buy a seat for the infant, as already suggested, or take another flight. You can not expect an airline to shuffle other passengers about purley on the basis that the bassinet seat was already taken.

Why shouldnt a businessperson book that seat so he has a larger table to spread papers around. There are only a limited number of “special” seats per flight. If you miss them at booking, well, its not as if there are not other options.

[IanFromHKG]

All this reminds me of a time, some years ago, when my wife, young daughter (aged 5, I think) and baby were flying BKK-LHR in First, and BA refused to book her the (empty) 1K bassinet seat (“because someone has already booked 1A and we only allow half the seats to be allocated in advance”) and then refused to give her the two adjacent middle seats (so she could at least sit with the 5-year-old) for the same reason. Over a dozen fruitless and infuriating calls later she wrote a vitriolic letter to then-BA chief Rod Eddington about how ridiculous this was. The letter ended with something along the lines of “rest assured that I will be taking enough copies of this letter on board with me to give to all other passengers in the first class cabin, so they know the reason why they are being disturbed by distressed young children is because of BA’s intransigence”

Nothing happened as a result of the letter, of course, but fortunately the other passengers were much more sensible and pragmatic – a couple of passengers very happily moved around and the family travelled together, with the bassinet seat

On that particular occasion the crew were very helpful – other times, we have seen First crew being very, very hostile. I recall being just behind my wife as she turned the buggy (a super-collabsible one that folded small enough to fit in an overhead locker) left as she went through the aircraft door to be met by the customary hatchet-faced harridan bellowing “You can’t bring that in here! You were TOLD!!” (we hadn’t, and up to that point we had ALWAYS taken the buggy on board with us with no problems), another occasion when the crew had not removed all the plastic wrappings from the blankets, earphones etc so our toddler was surrounded by them and my wife – hoping to chivvy the crew into removing them – politely said “sorry about the mess” only to have the FA say “that’s alright, I don’t have to clear it up” (!) as she turned on her heel and marched back to the galley; and one more time when the baby had fallen asleep on my wife’s tummy as she was lying flat so that she couldn’t reach the blanket without disturbing the baby – so she asked the FA to pass it to her whereupon said FA rolled her eyes, sighed, tutted loudly, picked up the (still wrapped) blanket and dropped it from a height of about a foot onto the sleeping baby. Oddly, all of these incidents involved female crew. My wife used to pray for the gay male FAs as they were universally pleasant and helpful…

Strangely, my wife still prefers travelling BA. Me, I prefer Cathay. BA crew can occasionally be stellar, more often they are mediocre, and sometimes they are a downright pain. At least on CX they are just consistently better than average (and the IFE is vastly superior)

[Ymelord]

Travellator – 05/01/2012 06:17 GMT

Cot Seat Upper Deck ? Dont think so – only position would be in front of row 60 at forward bulkhead. Also the child would have to be carried up the stairs and on H&S groundsdont this this would be allowed.

Maybe wrong on my behalf – seen loads of children on upper deck but in their own seats.

Reply

Actually, 64a has the baby cot table not row 60. Hence why, the flight crew often get 60b as a rest seat.

[Ymelord]

BAtraveller2, you don’t want an infant on the UD but don’t you think that 2 infants next to each other is much worse for the passenger on the lower deck since they keep waking each other up (not to mention the infants themselves). Most of the infants I see typically sleep through a long haul flight as long as they are in a cot

Am confused… 2 babies, one cot… NOT ALLOWED.

[acireale]

Correct 64 A/B have the cot table and yes definitely you can not have 2 babies on one cot, that’s exactly the problem.

[spudseamus]

yes I as a parent can sympathize with the predicament ! and F/A’s would need the “wisdom of Salomon” to fix this !! I have moved to accommodate baby problems before but they were short haul not sure I would do this for long haul ~~~~~ and my name is Murphy!

[acireale]

I sent a letter on my issue to Business Traveller. They escalated this to BA and got the following reply

“We understand the frustration of the customer on this particular flight. However, we don’t provide any bassinets of the upper decks of any of our Boeing 747’s so there would have been no special provision for the customer and her baby. We are sorry that the bassinet on the lower deck was already been being used by another customer’s baby, but there are a limited number of bassinet’s available on each aircraft.”

It goes without saying the BA response is ludicrous and clearly a lie since myself and several other travellers and flight attendants who replied to my original post confirmed that the cot in the upper deck can indeed be used for infants (and if not, why have it there in the first place…?) and I have seen infants there many times in the past

How can BA lie to a Customer in such a blatant way???
Perhaps BA new tagline should be ‘To fly to lie’….

[MartynSinclair]

“01/02/2012 02:36 GMT

“It goes without saying the BA response is ludicrous and clearly a lie”

My suggestion is to make another booking through telesales for a -400 flight well into the future and specifically ask for the upper deck seat where you believe the bassinet seat is situated.

BA may have changed their policy in which case you should retract your very sharp statement (with apology). However, indeed you may have been lied to which is made worse as the response was addressed to BT.

Again its a very simple exercise to get the truth on this matter.

[AdrianHenryAsia]

I travel on a regular basis – there is a bassinet position upstairs on the 747 at 64A.

I was on a 747 a week ago and saw a child in a bassinet position.

Interestingly, if you look on the seat map when you do on-line check-in, the system does not know its a bassinet position.

So, your response from BA may simply be incompetence rather than lies – which I have found in the past to be the case. I find on a regular basis that I know the layout and configuration of BA’s cabin better than the customer service agents on the phone/who answer emails.

[Tete_de_cuvee]

There is also this problem …

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2095561/Qantas-flight-grounded-dirty-nappy.html

[acireale]

Martyn, I did try your exercise to make a booking and indeed got confirmation that 64A is a cot seat. Thanks for the advice. This (together with the other postings) confirms there is no new policy and that the BA response to the Business Traveller inquiry was at best incompetent, at worst a lie.

[Author]

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