BA have announced that they will be following the lead of many budget airlines and charging passenegers to pre-book their seats. The prices will range from £10 to £60 depending on which seats you require. Passengers will be charged £10 on short haul flights, £20 on long haul or business economy and £60 on long haul business flights. Seats in an emergency exit row will cost £50 and can be booked between 10 and four days prior to departure. The good news is that if you don’t reserve a seat when you make a booking you will be able to book your seat, free of charge, within 24 hours of departure.

I’ve roughly calculated the extra cost for a family of 4 could range between £40 and a whopping £200 extra for their flights if, like me, they have infants and require those larger exit isle seats on long haul flights. BA have recently scrapped free meals on short haul flights and cut the baggage allowance for passengers in an attempt to cut it’s losses from £401m in the last financial year.

Although the costs will personally hit the pocket of many flyers, particularly families on a budget I think it’s a necessary step and one which gives customers flexibility and choice when traveling. However, having just tried to book a short internal flight on a different carrier for a family of 5 I am all too aware that the new pick and pay style of booking flights is just becoming too complicated for the average casual flyer and more needs to be done by the airline industry as a whole to standardise prices and more inportantly pricing structures on flights. As a footnote. After a couple of hours attempting to unravel the extra costs for my internal flight I gave up and decided to hire a car. Road trip here we come!