British Airways or United to London

For premium economy B.A. seem to be less expensive.

Have you included the seat reservation fee? If you want to select on a seat more than 24 hrs before flight time on BA, you pay extra.

I booked premium econ seats recently on BA and the charge to book particular seats was from £45-£70, depending on the position. I want an aisle seat and it’s not something I’m prepared to take a chance on, so I bit the bullet and paid. It used to cost £15 a few years ago 😞

If everything else is equal, I’d go based on price and schedule. BA charges for seat selection, so make sure to factor that in.

All of my recent flights to London have been on United. In the past, they have offered a daytime flight to London from IAD and I love that flight. Unfortunately, it is off the schedule at the moment and I am hoping they bring it back.

For what it is worth, I used to prefer BA to United but my last couple of intra-European BA flights have been poor with significant flight delays and little communication about the problem. Whenever you experience irregular operations, it colors your opinion about that airline.

We fly BA to London every time, using miles. I have not flown United at all, ever since a bad experience with them 25 years ago on a flight returning from Japan. Nothing dangerous, just a very unprofessional flight attendant, and overall poor service.

BA’s Premium Exonomy product is reputed to be very nice. I guess we will find out in April, as we were unable to get Business Class award seats for our flight back to Seattle, and are booked in PE (what BA calls World Traveler Plus). I am sure it will be just fine for the daytime flight—-it is overnight on the way to London when we need those lie-flat seats.

I did pay to select seats in advance—-we want the paired window + aisle seats on the side of the plane, not seats in the middle section with 3 seats in a row. I paid $238 for the 2 seats we wanted. There were only about 3 seat pairs left when I did this—-4 months ahead of the flight.

If seating matters to you, add an allowance for the seat selection fee to the flight cost you are seeing when you compare prices.

Which ever has an acceptable schedule and is the cheapest.

After a bad experience, won’t book with BA again.

I’m lucky to fly to London yearly. Does Virgin Airlines fly from your airport? Have you checked out the cost of flying via Virgin Airlines

Flown VA Premiere Economy Red Eye LAX to LHR for years. Love Virgin Atlantic airlines!

We flew American from Seattle to London last summer (no longer available) premium economy and it was a great experience with the return being with BA. We didn’t pay the extra for seats selection on BA (huge mistake) and ended up with the bathrooms at our backs. So when comparing prices, add seat selection to the cost. We fly United PE when flying out of SFO and have been very pleased with them.

Lola, we will have the same flight/sections for award flight in May out of Seattle. We usually fly in economy, so I'm looking forward to the flights (but I didn't reserve seats:(

hey thanks again for you time and your advise.
i do appreciate it!

Between the two I flew Br. Air to London LHR. Twice from OAK to Gatwick it may have been United, can't recall without looking at the notes. I much prefer landing at Gatwick but if Basic Economy, ie, rock bottom, absolute cheapest flight is to LHR from SFO, no problem. I'll take it.

I'm just back from the UK and flew BA Premium Economy both ways from Canada.
You do have to pay extra to book the seat you want.
It was pretty good, on an Airbus 350.
It was 2-4-2 seating.
The seats do have a very weird legrest thing that only comes out to a 45 degree angle, so it's pretty much useless.
I found it just got in the way of my legs and bag underneath the seat in front of me and was more irritating than useful.
The seats themselves were spacious and comfy, with a thick quilted cotton blanket and pillow supplied.

The IFE was the best I've seen on a plane in years, with literally hundreds of choices of audio and visual entertainment.
They give you very tight-fitting headphones; not comfy, so bring your own.

The food at dinner was ok, not the best I've ever eaten, but palatable.
They did not have my first choice and I was in the second row of P.E.
The "wake-up" snack was disgusting on both flights...a sort of long dead red pepper in an over microwaved soggy pastry thing.
I would recommend bringing some snacks with you if food matters to you when you fly.

I had flown P.E. on Air Canada to Italy earlier in 2023, and it was far superior to BA's service.

If you haven't been to Heathrow in a while, it's bigger than ever and I walked 1.2 miles from landing to getting to the Underground Station to get into Central London.

Well I booked the premium economy on British Airways IAH to LHR. I paid $100 to pick my seat. The over the wing seats were all that was available. Two more flights to book
Thanks again for all of your input

Honestly, there is not a perfect airline flying between the United States and Europe. There’s some really good ones flying between the United States and Asia but you’re going the wrong direction for the outstanding service experience. So pick the one you like, based on fare, schedule, etc. be sure to add and all the extra things like seat fees

An airline can change your seat assignment if they feel it's necessary. As much as pre-selecting your seat is desirable, having it changed and then angling for a refund could be problematic.
I'm reminded of flying BA SEA - LHR Feb. 2008. My outbound flight was in First and in inbound was in Club World. I wanted to know about possible differences in baggage allowance. I called the customer service number and said I was traveling Seattle Tacoma to London Heathrow in First and returning in Club World. The rep's reply was, "Well, I need to know where you're flying from and flying too before I can give you any information." I explained that the last I heard Seattle Tacoma was in Seattle and London Heathrow was in London. She never changed her condescending attitude and acted like she was doing me a favour. That was only the beginning of my fight with BA customer service at their Florida call centre. I eventually prevailed.

Going to Europe from SFO, non-stop, overnight flight, Basic Econ. seat, regardless of its name, ie no frills, dirt cheapest seat, 11 hours duration, I know there are airlines I won't fly, unless the price is so attractive which cannot be passed up, in spite of the other likely unpleasantries, 2. airlines I consider tolerable, ie barely satisfactory at worst but generally satisfactory, and finally those, I prefer flying with due to repeated pleasant and satisfactory experiences . BA fits the bill.

I've learned that seat selection doesn't always end up with what we chose. Twelve years ago, we chose two seats with one on the aisle, in the middle section of the plane, to head home from Europe. As it turned out, a different plane was used and it was configured differently. As a result, seating was different and we had to climb over people to get out of our middle section seats. That was one bad experience out of several good ones, but just know it can happen.

Currently in the middle of our first and last BA experience. The app is garbage, so you can't check in and you can't check bags online, even though they'll charge more at the airport. On the way here we could check in on a browser at home, but to get home we don't have that option.

Both planes had issues on the outbound flights. Missed the connection because of the maintenance delay and had to wait 8 hours for another flight. Then that plane had issues so we have to deplane, take buses to a new plane and reboard. All that took a couple of hours.

Upon arrival the gate crew had left. How is that even possible? So again we had to use busses to get to the terminal. By this time even the pilot sounds frustrated and exhausted.

Finally arrived at our destination 10+ hours late after ~26 hours of travel. We talked to several other people who had similar connection issues and delay lengths.

Never again.

Unfortunately any airline can have delays like that. From what we have seen here they are pretty common.

Was this a flight from the US to Europe? If so, you may be glad you were flying BA instead of United or other US carrier—- you may be able to claim compensation under EU261.

https://thepointsguy.com/guide/guide-eu261-flight-compensation/

For a 10-hour delay it could be as much as 600€ each.

If I decided after every bad experience that I was never going to fly an airline again, I would be limited to going to Singapore because the only airline I’ve ever been on that I didn’t have a bad experience with was Singapore airlines. Of course, I’ve only flown them twice so their odds were good, and they are an amazingly good airline.

If you travel enough, you discover every airline can and will have a bad day. It’s just what happens. I had some epic failures on United, Delta, Southwest, American, British Airways, Lufthansa, Virgin Atlantic and a number of carriers that are no longer in business. Epic we’re talking three or four day delays, some of the rudest people you’ll ever meet in your life etc.

I base my decisions on the best pricing and schedule because even if I fly my favorite carrier, there’s no guarantee it won’t be a bad day (actually, my upcoming trip is free thanks to an epic failure by Virgin Atlantic. They gave me a free business round-trip ticket in compensation.)

We had a BA Visa card for years which gave us a "companion flies free" ticket to anywhere they went once a year. So we used them for 14 years. I'm 75 now and we decided to stop our annual trip from L.A. to London (and beyond) after this year. There was some sort of glitch in 2021 and we ended up on United for the leg going east. The in-flight entertainment was down on the entire plane for the 10 hour flight. It seemed a little shoddy compared to BA.