Scheduled V Charter

ferf1223

Voyager2002 wrote: »

On BA, unless you have status as a frequent flyer you can only reserve seats free within a couple of days of departure.

agree - I didn't say you could not reserve seats, just not at no extra charge...admittedly I left out the part about being able to do so shortly before departure.

Murphy_The_Cat

ferf1223 wrote: »

agree - I didn't say you could not reserve seats, just not at no extra charge...admittedly I left out the part about being able to do so shortly before departure.

On my flight with BA, its 24 hours before departure and I'm currently counting the hours down (with the other Tab showing me the Seatguru set up of Cattle Class on by BA flights).

For BA Cattle Class Internal its £10 per person, per section
For BA Cattle Class Long Haul its £25 per person, per section (or £30 for some particular seats)

dickydonkin

Murphy_The_Cat wrote: »

On my flight with BA, its 24 hours before departure and I'm currently counting the hours down (with the other Tab showing me the Seatguru set up of Cattle Class on by BA flights).

:rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:

You sound like me!

Mrs DD always laughs at me when I am up until daft o' clock waiting for the countdown to online check in with my list of preferred seats.

She never complains though when I have managed to bag decent seats!

If you are flying from a regional airport to a destination via Heathrow for example, your 24 hour countdown commences when your domestic flight is scheduled to depart so you have an advantage of those departing directly from Heathrow.

I will deliberately take the earliest flight available from Newcastle to ensure I get a decent choice of seats when checking in online.

ferf1223

I'm always poised and ready at the 24-hour mark even on other airlines that do allow us to choose seats at the time we book for free...because once we were told that once you checked in online it's almost impossible for them to move your seats. This is in addition to the obsessive checking we still have our requested seats in the weeks and days leading up to the flights.

Murphy_The_Cat

dickydonkin wrote: »

:rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:

You sound like me!

Mrs DD always laughs at me when I am up until daft o' clock waiting for the countdown to online check in with my list of preferred seats.

.

For us, its not that much of a big deal, as BA always sit families together (or well as they can sit a family of 4 on a 3-3-3 flight), but for the return flight, there are 4 particular seats on the 747 that would make me particularly happy

p.s. I've just checked on the BA site and with 3 days to go. we've got our seats allocated (now I just need to wait until 24 hours to go and I can switch them around a bit !)

814man

Thanks for the useful info everyone. We are looking at 2 very similar holidays in Mexico, one is with direct flight on Thomas Cook from Manachester to Cancun, the other goes on BA from Manchester to Gatwick then on to Cancun.
Any other thoughts or sugestions would be great to help us with decision.

duchy

The big one for me is if a charter plane goes technical you get to wait til they've fixed it (often means flying out parts from the UK) whereas scheduled carriers usually have local arrangements in place and also have more flexibility to switch you on to other carriers too and they have reciprical arrangements with other airlines .

That alone for me is enough to make the decision easy -a charter would need to be significantly cheaper for me to even consider it as an option.

Murphy_The_Cat

814man wrote: »

Thanks for the useful info everyone. We are looking at 2 very similar holidays in Mexico, one is with direct flight on Thomas Cook from Manachester to Cancun, the other goes on BA from Manchester to Gatwick then on to Cancun.
Any other thoughts or sugestions would be great to help us with decision.

Not quite a straightforwad choice then.
For ME, unless the flight times were better for me and the prices were substantially less, I'd be flying with BA (after I'd enrolled myself on the American Airlines AAAdvanatge scheme to get the airmiles).
Do you know the plane/seat pitch that TC would be using ?

budgetflyer

Another BA advantage is a Cancun RTN is worth about 10000 Avios which is enough for a reward rtn (+£27) to the likes of Prague, Amsterdam, Dusseldorf,Paris etc

joerugby

We flew BA Cancun to LGW last year and there were plenty of football shirts. It's a bit "dumbed down" compared with traditional BA long haul i.e. no first class, Gatwick crew and a bit more "friendly". More of a holiday flight really. Service was not as good as a typical north american BA flight but was still OK.

Our return was delayed by 24 hours as a result of a technical fault on the inbound aircraft. We got an extra day's hols and BA picked up most of our extra costs.

I've never tried a long haul charter but would book BA again on this route based on our experience.