MOVED TO ANGER

One of the benefits of having a British Airways gold card is the supposed ability to pre-book seats on the plane ahead of check-in. I travelled with the airline from Geneva to London on March 4 and later on March 18. I booked the emergency exit, seat 10A, on both journeys – well in advance – and when I turned up at the airport, I was still booked in this seat.

On the first flight, when it was time to board, I was asked to stand to one side while they issued a new boarding pass – it turned out I was moved to seat 16A, which was not by an emergency exit. When I asked, I was told it was “London who has moved you”. Imagine my surprise when I found out that the reason why I was moved was so that an off-duty captain could sit in that seat.

A similar situation occurred when I was moved to seat 16F two weeks later – a couple sat in my pre-booked seat (and the one next to it). This time, I was told it was due to a different aircraft configuration, which was not true since the plane was the same as the one I had booked my seat on.

I wonder what BA is playing at and why it treats customers in this way? The seats were booked using Avios and I have a feeling BA treats these bookings as inferior and, therefore, moves people to less desirable seats.

This, for me, is another reason to stop travelling BA following the host of changes to lounge catering, use of Avios, lack of long-haul Avios seats, etc, which means travelling BA is now a rather unpleasant experience. Phil Berry, Geneva

BRITISH AIRWAYS REPLIES:

We fulfil advance seat requests from many thousands of Executive Club members every day and we recognise how much the service is valued. We always do our best to provide customers with the seats they selected and are sorry that we were not able to do so for this customer.