BA longhaul baggage fees

[SpicyTomatos]

Not sure if this has been discussed before, but BA seems to have introduced longhaul baggage fees. You can now fly "economy basic" or "economy standard". The latter costs between £30 and £75 more and allows you to bring a bag and pick a seat 24 hours in advance.

Annoyingly, there seems to be no way to search for "economy standard" only and Kayak is not aware of this, so to find out the price you need to click on a basic price and wait for it to calculate.

Sounds like a ruse to market lower prices rather than a feature to reward the rare longhaul traveller who doesn't have a bag.

Unimpressed.

I don’t get the problem. We flew with cabin bag only to Milan and the three pricing levels were obvious on their web site when we booked. Why don’t you use their site and then you will see the prices and options. Simples!

BAs web site! Not anyone else’s.

I don’t understand the problem either. If you don’t want to pay for a hold bag you don’t have to so there are more options for people.

Milan is quite a long way from longhaul.

Yes, for shorthaul the pricing is quite clear, and I don't have a problem.

For example, when looking at a 12 hour flight with a vaguely flexible departure date, I don't really want to have to click on every single date to see how much of a premium a bag is when almost everyone will fly with one.

Normally kayak does this job for me.

Milan, Tokyo, New York - the BA website is the same. Long haul just has premium and first! If you use another site you are not getting the relevant info. Just look at BA. You get date options with cheapest flagged up and you can upgrade to baggage, premium, business etc etc if you wish. I really think you are being stubbornly attacked to kayak - why?

Since April BA has rolled out baggage charges for various destinations. For those destinations you now get a choice (yes on BA's website) of economy basic, premium economy or business. Now when you click on economy you get the extra option of actually taking a bag with you. In total therefore you have four options.

Clearly you haven't discovered this on the destinations you have looked at. Try Mauritius.

What I was looking for was a way to search without the option few people will want.

It's a bit Ryan Air.

www.theguardian.com/business/2018/apr/11/british-airways-cheaper-basic-fare-long-haul-routes-pay-check-baggage-select-seat

Normally kayak does this job for me.

Then the problem is Kayak.

Spicy I get your problem and yes, it does seem like BA are being twatish. You want to be able to compare all airlines for flying with a bag. Not unreasonable. Bottom line is price isn't everything and BA are being shit so I'd avoid even if they did end up being cheapest without hiding the true cost. That and I flipping hate LHR, so balls to 'em!

We are quite happy with BA and their pricing. They charge less if you don’t take hold luggage. As we are close enough to LHR, we usually go Business from T5. I really don’t see the angst on this.

I'm not really sure what you mean either OP.

I've just booked longhaul direct with BA, it was £30 more each to go ecomony standard, as we're travelling with the kids I want to make sure we are sat together (if it's just me and DH we sometimes risk it and don't book seats) and we need 1 suitcase so it actually worked out cheaper to book economy standard as it would cost more than £30 each to book the seats both ways plus a case.