Do I get free seat selection as a British Airways Executive Club member?

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Do you get free seat selection as a British Airways Executive Club member?

In this article I want to look at whether you need to pay for British Airways seat selection if you have Gold, Silver or Bronze Executive Club status.

Whilst most airlines now charge for seat selection in Economy, British Airways is one of the very few to charge in Premium Economy / World Traveller Plus and Club World / Club Europe. Only First Class passengers avoid the fee if they want to select a seat in advance.

We’ve written about the basics of British Airways Executive Club tier levels here, but as a recap, remember that Blue membership is your default entry level status whilst Bronze, Silver and Gold must all be earned with the collection of tier points from flights.

Unfortunately, Blue members do not get any special seating privileges. If you only hold British Airways Blue membership you will still have to pay to select a seat more than 24 hours in advance.

Bronze, Silver and Gold status holders get varying levels of free advance seat selection depending on your tier. Here are the details:

Bronze: free seat selection up to seven days before departure for everyone on your booking

Silver: free seat selection at the time of booking for everyone on your booking

Gold: free seat selection at the time of booking for everyone on your booking and friends and family who are flying in the same class on the same flight

If you’re a Bronze member, you get a significant head-start on all those without Bronze status and who refuse to pay for advance selection, so you should hopefully find a seat to your preference.

Silver and Gold members can select seats at the time of booking with the best seats – such as Row 1 in Club Europe – held back for Golds and their fellow passengers. (The full rules on who can sit in Row 1 on British Airways are in this article.)

Seat selection isn’t the only benefit of status, however. You can read all the perks of British Airways Executive Club status here.

If you want to see a seat map for your upcoming long-haul British Airways flights, Head for Points has commissioned an exclusive series of British Airways seat maps which you can find here.

(This article is part of our ‘BA Q&A’ series which explains how British Airways Executive Club works. You can see all of our ‘BA Q&A’ articles here. )

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