Silversea air by British Airways

In view of the situation in Istanbul I have booked the SS air package for a June cruise starting there. Not something I would do out of choice but my thinking was that if the situation turned ugly they could have the problem of rearranging my arrival to where ever any altered cruise may depart from.

I have received the BA locator and the flight appears on my executive club profile but I am unable to choose a seat as I do when booking direct. Having spoken to BA they tell me that SS have booked the flight but it is not yet ticketed and until this is done no seat options will be available.

Does anyone have any experience of this and any idea when SS will do the necessary or do they wait until issuing their own tickets before firming up with the airline?

If it is the PRN you are entering, log out and log back in as there is several intermittent faults on the BA system and this is a known one.

Make sure you go to MMB and it should be an option at the bottom of the page to choose your seat for a fee unless you are travelling F or qualify for free choice. Once you have a PRN your are a potential revenue stream for seat fees so BA wants your cash.

Jeff

We travel BA regularly between Phoenix and London. Normally, you can't seat select until check-in unless you buy an upgraded seat. Don't know how SS works it with them, but that's the norm. Have never had a bad flight with BA.

In my experience you are unable to choose seats for BA flights until they are ticketed.

Silversea usually do this about 60 days before departure

You can choose your seat as soon as it booked not ticketed.

http://www.britishairways.com/en-gb/information/seating/choosing-your-seat

We are sailing with Silversea in March and I have only been able to choose seats and pay for extra baggage now that they have been ticketed. It is always like this in my experience

The tickets are likely to be 'bulk' tickets, because SS will have contracted special fares with BA. Most likely, the fare basis will show 'BT' either as a stand alone fare basis or it will be found within a longer fare basis. Seating selection on bulk tickets isn't usually available until tickets are actually issued.

The OP has said clearly the booking appears under his BA membership.

i once had SS flights booked on BA in business

in those days i had basic membership and i had to pay 25 € i think for chosing my place ( i need an aisle )

later i had silver and gold - now back to silver and then you can chose your seat for free

i also noticed both in first as in business particular seats are reserved for gold.

I would think that Silversea books the same type of fare as Regent - the bulk tickets. We book air with Regent 270 days in advance of our cruise. Regent books the seats when they book our air. The first thing we do is go into the BA website and change our seats (no cost). So, it is worth a try to go into "Manage My Booking" on the BA website and attempt to change seats!

Note - We booked BA on our own last year and BA was getting 100 GBP (each way) to book seats in advance - even Business Class (upstairs on their 747 aircraft was 125 GPB).

Thanks for all the interesting comments.

SS have arranged for the upgrade to club Europe and the class is I. I suspect Swindy may be correct and it will be much nearer the time that SS arrange for ticketing.

Jeff, what is the PRN number to which you refer? I am using the locator ref (6 letters and numbers) to access the booking. I have silver status so there would be no cost to book it is just the usual access to the seat booking part of the system that I require.

If I follow the usual procedure when hitting the select seat button I am told it is only possible at check in.

If you can find it under your own exec number it should be ready to reserve a seat. I'm tempted to ask whether you got through to the UK call centre or the other one ...... as the ticket not being issued is a fairly standard excuse from the other centre.

Have you tried going down to the set of small words under the large MMB section where it has a grey line which says "reserve your seat". Also try not going via your exec number but use the number plus surname route in.

Are you BA silver or an equivalent? The other thing to try is try is as you are Silver try the Finnair site and see if that allows you in. When I was Silver equivalent from Cathay ie Gold when BA wouldn't let me in to reserve - Finnair would. Might be worth a try. When you find your booking it gives you the opportunity to add your BA or other exec number and this gets you into the system as Silver.

Also enter your number into checkmytrip classic to see whether it shows any other info about the ticket. There is another similar looking number often showed that might work. It might also show the long number which normally starts with something like 125-........

The problem of not being able to reserve a seat is regularly griped on FT and is a well known regular fault.

I have flown several hundred BA sectors and never had a booking under my membership and not been able to choose a seat, but have read of the problem. Let us know.

Jeff

ps ...... I wish I'd read more carefully! Ipad! Another thought.

The error message you get generally means it is available for reservation but something has flagged and often indicates that they are either working on the seats or flight OR that there is a potential security or visa flag or something. Sometimes just trying again in a day or so clears it. I have had that a few times but only for a short time.

Have you logged a BA profile with a passport number and expiry with less than 6 months of life after the travel date? What is the route?

Jeff

I use BA out of Miami to fly to Europe. Each time, Flying in Business Class, I was not allowed to make seat selection unless I paid a fee that amounted to $125 per passenger. I paid as I am very selective about where I want to sit. If I didn't want to pay, the option given was 24 hours before the flight and who knows if we could get 2 seats together in our preferred area. Maybe this is only pertains to BA USA. I should also note that it was full fare, refundable tickets.

We had a similar experience w SS air on United this week. Flights showed up in my Silversea and on our United FF account, but per United they were not yet ticketed; thus we could not select seats or upgrade. I called our TA who called SS. Initially SS said we need to pay a $100 fee to get the tickets issued "early" (cruise is in 1st week of March), but then issued the tickets the next day without fee (TA told me the tickets were issued - wasn't apparent from my SS or United website). I then called United again and was able to upgrade with miles and pick seats. At least one other poster has said SS initially asked for a fee for "early" issuance of tickets but then waived it.

If you can find it under your own exec number it should be ready to reserve a seat. I'm tempted to ask whether you got through to the UK call centre or the other one ...... as the ticket not being issued is a fairly standard excuse from the other centre.

 

Have you tried going down to the set of small words under the large MMB section where it has a grey line which says "reserve your seat". Also try not going via your exec number but use the number plus surname route in.

 

Are you BA silver or an equivalent? The other thing to try is try is as you are Silver try the Finnair site and see if that allows you in. When I was Silver equivalent from Cathay ie Gold when BA wouldn't let me in to reserve - Finnair would. Might be worth a try. When you find your booking it gives you the opportunity to add your BA or other exec number and this gets you into the system as Silver.

 

Also enter your number into checkmytrip classic to see whether it shows any other info about the ticket. There is another similar looking number often showed that might work. It might also show the long number which normally starts with something like 125-........

 

The problem of not being able to reserve a seat is regularly griped on FT and is a well known regular fault.

 

I have flown several hundred BA sectors and never had a booking under my membership and not been able to choose a seat, but have read of the problem. Let us know.

 

Jeff

Jeff, thanks for this and I can tell you that the booking is shown on the Finnair site much to my surprise and also show my exec club number. The bad news is that I am unable to book a seat there though. I have tried checkmytrip but can not access it on my ipad for some reason so will try my laptop when i get a chance.

The finnair site shows the booking to have been done by SS and gives an email address but my mobile number as the contact details. I think I will get get on to my agent and let him earn his commission. Having said that he got SS to waive the £100 they wanted for changing their package. I only wanted the 1 night in Istanbul rather than the 2 on offer. So I was saving them the cost of a hotel for 1 night and also the cost of the airport/hotel transfer as I am due to arrive Istanbul at 23.40 when their agents are tucked up in bed. I chose this so as to spend as little time there as possible.

thanks .... that's good to hear although not - because it remains unresolved.

For some Istanbul is often the flag, for several reasons. Evisa replaced visa on arrival recently and BA are penalised for not checking these things, and there is also some flaggings due to Syria via Istanbul for UK residents on one way tickets which many cruisers are on. Just get to the airport early.

This is most likely a BA or security issue as I said, not likely an SS issue as many others have raised for the reasons I explained. Just because there are SS issues with ticketing does not mean that every issue is the SS ticketing process. I think all the signs are that you can relax knowing you are good to go, it may be that they don't want to allow you and others through OLCI without checking you first and that has prevented you choosing a seat. There is a lot of sensitivity on people on one way tickets via IST at the moment ..... BA staff are not likely to warn you of this ..... all to our common good. Have a good trip.

Good luck.

Jeff

I have had the same experience with BA on Silversea (and other) cruise lines.

As soon as the flights are ticketed about 60 days out, you will be able to select seats. Having a PIN number does not expedite matters.

Have a good trip OP!

I use BA out of Miami to fly to Europe. Each time, Flying in Business Class, I was not allowed to make seat selection unless I paid a fee that amounted to $125 per passenger. I paid as I am very selective about where I want to sit. If I didn't want to pay, the option given was 24 hours before the flight and who knows if we could get 2 seats together in our preferred area. Maybe this is only pertains to BA USA. I should also note that it was full fare, refundable tickets.

Agree that this is the case when booking BA on your own but we have always been able to change the seats that Regent has booked for us months in advance. As soon as we receive the "Booking Reference" number from Regent (or our TA), we go into "Manage My Booking" on the BA website - put in the number and our last name and have no problem changing the seats (and they are not ticketed until approximately 3 months prior to the cruise).

We don't bother with Executive Club numbers -- just the Booking Reference. It sounds as if Silversea may just have a different way of booking flights.

P.S. If all else fails, give British Airways a call -- they have always been very helpful.

Different cruise lines will have different arrangements with different airlines with respect to their airfares offers. Some have no arrangements at all.

Most have an agreed allocation at an agreed price, and when a customer buys one of this allocation the cruise line simple "pencils" the passengers name on their list and can confirm to the customer that they have the airline place. However it isn't in their interest to confirm names to the airlines because once they do, then if the passenger cancels or wishes to make a change then the cruise line may trigger a change fee or other penalty with the airline.They may not be able to pass that on to the passenger. This needlessly reduces profit compared to leaving name confirmations to the last minute. So they leave this for as long as possilble and like to pass on a fee to offset against the risk of a change being made if done earlier.

When eventually they submit the list of passengers to the airline many cruise lines ie make the reservations they often call this (and so do many passengers) "ticketing". It isn't ticketing. The airlines ticket at some point after a booking. There is a reservation number locator and a ticket number. Most people never see the ticketed number. Sometimes the ticket number is issued immediately sometimes it can take weeks. In fact "ticketing" is a legacy term from those days when the hard copy ticket long multi carbon set was physically printed and issued.

Many airlines have different moments when you can choose your seats or make changes. One arrangement does not explain all. One cruise line's approach doesn't fit all. One airlines's approach doesn't fit all. The combination of all these variables makes the predction of what causes these issues difficult. BA states that you can choose your seat once a reservation is made ie as the PNR is issued. The OP has a reservation number. It may cure on it's own accord or with human intervention or he may have to wait until the airport perhaps for reasons I have speculated.

I hope this helps explains why so many see different experiences.

Jeff