To expect British Airways to sit me next to my breastfed baby's basinette on a 27 hour flight?

[TheToadLessTravelled]

Looking for advice from more seasoned travellers.

Booked for a 27 hour flight with DH and 11mo DS tomorrow.
Had booked to all sit together but British Airways lost/changed the seat allocation somehow and we have ended up with DH near the basinette and me where I could not even see the baby.

BA have been really unhelpful and I am really stressing about the flight now.

Three calls to BA have given three different stories about whether/how we can be moved but we are still not together although at least I can see DS from where I now am moved to several rows back.

The last agent said all bulkhead seats are now allocated and all cot positions booked on the whole flight in all classes which I thought would be unlikely.
Also told me there are no flights close to that time I can switch to.
Also told I cannot switch seats with DH so I have the cot position seat.

DS is tall and wriggly so even if me and DH swap seats so I can BF on takeoff the person next to me is going to have kicking feet in their lap. I don't want to be a total pain to other passengers but us sitting apart is going to mean a lot of getting up and down, shouting out etc I can just see it going wrong.

Any advice on how to get this resolved?
Not sure what else I can do

Daily fail story you say?

Do I get to do the classic disappointed face while pointing? Perhaps we can get the baby to look disappointed as well

BA used to be great but are pretty crap these days (brother works for them...). Def change to Air NZ if you can.

oh, absoultely! Try to get your arms crossed, if you can. For the baby, I'd go with screaming it's head off, if possible

Update from BA... Or rather non update. The local call centre cannot even see our ticket terms as we were issued a paper ticket, so cannot advise on refunds.

They have recommended calling the UK call centre (at our expense) to see if they can help. Now we just have to wait till UK working hours.

The call centre could not even assist with a complaint.

All in all yet another appalling customer service experience from BA to add to our collection.

Hello, am back. I can't comment on any individual situations, (and very tired at the moment, having been out flying.) But if you really want to write to a relevant person, that person would be Frank van der Post, Managing Director - Customer Experience. He is very high up. You could try him on frank.vanderpost at ba.com, but I didn't tell you that.

PS I am really surprised that you were issued with paper tickets - it is almost unheard of these days to have paper tickets, normally you would be issued with a 6 digit/letter booking reference. The same system is used by most major travel and holiday companies round the world. It's the most reliable way of letting passengers access and change their bookings on their own computers - which, if you had been able to access your booking online, you wouldn't be having this trouble now!

The 6 digit code is also on the paper ticket ...even if they are the 'cardboard boarding pass ones or even the mega mega old carbon copy ones...not seen one of them for years. You should be able to access your booking on line as well with this. It is on there..

I could access my online booking but it still didn't let me seat me, dh and my just 3yo daughter together earlier in the year.

Backinthebox thank you for all your advice! I will send off an email tonight and let you know what happens.

Not sure why we got a paper ticket. Everyone has been surprised we got given one, even Jetstar who supposedly required it did not know how to process it! And it seems to have caused probs with the online system as well a we cannot do anything online.

Backinthebox - can I vote for you to be the next Managing Director of Customer Experience please?

Yes I second the motion to vote backinthebox as the new head of customer experience!

Don't worry. Whatever anyone 'official' says, no-one else is going to want to sit next to your baby. Even if you are exceptionally unlucky and a find there is a really really stupid mean person sitting in the next seat who refuses to swap, they will change their mind the very moment your baby first starts crying for a feed and you say sweetly "Go ahead, s/he likes the left breast first" !

(Sorry - didn't spot this was an old thread )