Simon Calder's Holiday Helpdesk: How can we ensure our family will sit together on a BA flight?
Every day our travel guru answers your travel questions
Your support helps us to tell the story
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Your support makes all the difference.Q We are a family of five, and we are booked to fly on the new BA flight from Gatwick to Tenerife next year. I say we should pay extra to pre-book seats together. My husband says we don't need to. Who's right?
Anne Jones, London
A You both are. If you want to be absolutely sure that the Jones family will sit together, all in the same row, then you would need to pay a total of £50 each way to book seats in advance (this fee is waived for the whole family if one of the passengers is an infant under 2). But British Airways also provides, free of charge, a pre-allocation service for families: “If you decide not to reserve your seats in advance, we'll do it for you five days before departure,” says the airline.
BA does not guarantee that you will all sit together: “If you can't be seated together, we'll make sure each child is seated with an adult from your group.” But in my experience of flying en famille with BA, you can be confident that you will be allocated seats either in the same row or in adjacent rows.
Even if you are not allocated seats together, fellow passengers will always help to ensure families are not separated. On a flight earlier this year on Tunisair, I was travelling in a family group of five, including two young children. We were allocated random seats in different rows scattered the length of the plane. With a bit of shuffling around, everyone ended up happy.
Click HERE to email Simon.
You can also tweet him your questions @SimonCalder
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments