Charge to pre-assigning seats - what if we do not pay?

You can seats for free when you check in, 24 hours in advance. You can monitor the seating chart before then to see if things are getting booked up in terms of seats together, and decide then if you should pay th efee or not. Do you have at least one child under 12 traveling with you? If, so , here is the policy: "Passengers travelling with children aged 2-11 years:
If you do not choose a seat, we will allocate you a suitable one 3 days before departure. "If the group cannot be seated together, each child will be seated with an adult at least." In other words, if you are a family traveling with children under 12 you get a break. I see your comment that "If paid, this would increase our ticket fares by more almost 20%." Do you really mean that? That you paid only $380 for the RT tickets to Europe? ($76 seat ion fee = 20% of $380, total price with seat fee $456 per person.) That would be hard to beat on any airline offering free seat ion.

Lola, Thanks for the reply. No, the fee is per seat, per leg. So if you have 4 or even 5 legs, it starts adding up. $38 * 4 = $152.

OK, I see. You are counting 4 flights per person. What we do is pre-book seats for the overseas flight (Seattle to Heathrow) so we are assured of sitting together (family of four like you). We do not pay to select seats in advance for the intra-Europe flight (LHR to Zurich, etc.) We've never had a problem getting seats close together for that.

My concern is whether they would spread us in middle seats around the cabin, or whether they still endeavor to put family members together when possible.
Thanks again for your advise!

I think we are talking about several different things here. First of all, "they", meaning BA, does not assign seats to you unless (1) you are traveling as a family with a child under 12 and do not pay to choose seats, in which case they will pick seats together for you if at all possible, 3 days in advance, which is before others get to pick seats for free. I am guessing that means, on a 747 with 3-4-3 seating, you get 4 middle seats in a row, if such row is still available at that time. (That is what we used to pick in the days before BA started charging for seat ion.) If you don't have a child under 12 traveling with you, and choose not to pay the $38 per person, you will be able to choose your seats yourself when you check in online, 24 hours ahead of the flight. At that time, you choose from what is left after others have paid to in advance. I have heard many others say they have no trouble getting 2 seats together at that time, so you could sit two and two, maybe a few rows apart, but four right in a row might be tough. The only way BA would assign seats to you then is if you did not check in online ahead of time, and/or did not seats at that time. Then you likely would end up with seats scatterred around the cabin.

What I really wanted to know was how likely is it that we will have seats together if we do NOT pay the additional fee. Just trying to calculate the options. It sounds like if we assign first thing in the 24 hour before flying time (13 year daughter, so no 3 day option), it is possible\probable that we will find seats together. Again, thanks for the advice.

If you really want to know, rather than guessing, then just monitor the seating chart from time to time. Go to "manage my booking" on the BA website, using your booking reference code. Pretend you are going to pay to select seats---work through the process, proceeding through the steps until they display the chart with available seats showing. You can look at this display without selecting or paying for anything. If it looks like things are filling up, you can decide to pay for seats at that time. Friends of mine have done this and decided to pay for 2 seats, not four. They booked the 2 aisle seats in a 4-person row (center section) and gambled that no one would book the two seats between them. It worked. We actually fly business class (on miles tickets) and the seat selection costs a whole lot more. But given that we haven't paid full price for the tickets, it is worth it, but only for the overseas leg.

No one is going to be able to give you a specific answer, it's all going to be speculation based on their past experiences. as the old saying goes, your mileage may vary, your situation depends on how many people are travelling on this flight. These days most flights to Europe are full, so as Lola mentioned you will need to monitor the seating chart to see how they are filling up and base your decision on that. If all else fails, one can always ask another passenger if they are willing to switch seats if they are seated next to your daughter, but what comes into play here is did that person pay the premium (probably be less willing to trade with someone) for the seat and if they are willing are they going to have to move to a middle seat.

It is the new era of air travel - expect to pay for everything. Recent on a US flight where the aisle seats were $10 more. The BA is a direct flight from Denver so I would pay the fee because it will be full. It is the only London flight out of Denver and my experience with in the summer is that it is always full. And the same for the Lufthansas flight.

I would not pay the fee. Airlines are fairly good about this and I would doubt that you would have a very high percentage of the 777 paying for a seat assignment. As a family they will definitely try and keep you together. While I haven't had to go through this on BA, I have experienced this a few times on Singapore airlines where they do not preassign economy seats. I have always had seats where the family sits together.

In short: if your children are older than 12, there is no guarantee they will seat you together. Making these arrangements for families being together, or tall people seating in the emergency line etc. have all become trickier for airlines as they now charge for certain/all seat arrangements and selection. So if a passenger paid $38 to select a window seat, it is very, very unlikely the passenger would agree to forfeit the benefit of payment (seat selection) just so that husband and wife can travel side by side. I know I would not accept any suggestion of changing my seat if I had paid for its special assignment, and would just adopt a "it's the carrier's problem" attitude.

Well your daughter only needs to be near one of you right,, so thats only two seats together not three or four. Secondly, if you get to airport early enough you can pick your seats and most likely out of whole plane there will be 2 seats together. Frankly I would not pay extra. Finally ,, if you get a window or aisle seat someone will likely happily trade you , might be harder if you get assigned 3 or 4 middle seast only, but seriously I would not stress about sitting together, you likely will get at least two of you together and as far as I am concerned that is all you need., Just get to airport well ahead of time and get in that line!

Pat, I know you mean to offer reassurance, but getting to the airport early is not the answer. By then there will be little choice of seats left. On BA you can select seats for free when you check in and print a boarding pass, 24 hours in advance of the flight. That is what nearly everyone does, and that is what Alan can do to ensure the best seat selection, if they choose not to pay.

Very helpful advice. It appears the best approach is to watch the seat assignments on the BA site. If they start to fill up, pay the fee. Again, thanks to all.