lovely2c

I can't find anything current to answer my question so I am hoping someone has some up to date info re my question. I have purchased an American Airlines business class ticket -DFW to LHR with a connecting flight to Lisbon that has an AA flight number but is operated by British Airways. I have a a reserved seat on the first portion but was told AA could not reserve a BA seat. The reservation clerk then rattled off a list of ways to get a reserved seat but she lost me. (I had to speak with a person vs doing this all on-line because I was using an AA credit.) Is there some way to get a reserved seat on the BA portion - other than waiting until I arrive at Heathrow and go to the BA desk?

RJames

You can pay for a seat assignment, do online check in (when it opens) and hope to get a good seat. If you have OW elite status add your ff number to the reservation and you'll be able to get a seat assignment.

Rastaguytoday

I called BA and pestered them into giving me their Locator number for the trip. Once I had the locator number, I was golden.

Helps that I'm and elite for life.

lovely2c

RJames & Rastaguytoday-Your responses led me to ask additional questions. RJ-Re 0nline check in when it opens - do you know "when it opens"? - e.g. 24 hours ahead of departure or something similar. Does one go to ba.com? If so, one does need a BA "booking reference" which seems to be two letters followed by four digits. Where does one get the booking reference - is that what Rastaguytoday refers to as "their Locator number" which ended up making him golden?

Gardyloo

If you booked through AA, you will have been given a six-letter confirmation code, also called a "record locator" or "PNR." It will look something like ABCXYZ.

British airways uses a different booking system (AA's is based on the Sabre system, BA's on Amadeus.) A BA reference number will be six letter/number combinations, e.g. AB2DEF or A2B3DE.. any permutation. Your reservation will have BOTH the AA and the BA locators attached to it.

You can phone AA or BA (usually AA is easier) and give them your AA-issued locator, then ask them to give you the BA locator. Once you have that, you can go to the BA website and click on "manage my booking" which will prompt you for the BA locator. Once you've entered that, you can go to the screens where you can pay for seat selection in advance (or pick seats at 24 hours before flight.) Note that it's 24 hours before the first flight if you're connecting directly from one flight to the next (which it sounds like in your case.) It will be useful for you to have the actual BA flight number. If you're departing London at 2:55 PM it will likely be BA502 for that flight, but check it yourself.

Assuming you're in business class on the London-Lisbon flight, and if you want to pay for advance seat selection, I'd recommend picking the "A/C" side of the plane. BA uses a modified 2-3 seating layout in its shorthaul flights, and I find the A/C seats (left side facing forward) feel roomier than the ones across the aisle, even though BA doesn't put anyone in the middle seat on the 3-side.

lovely2c

Gardyloo - Thank you for the detailed response. I really appreciate it. I guess one needs a sense of humor to think that after paying more than $4000 for a business class ticket, one must pay some more for the BA seat selection. I will call AA to get the BA locator and wait until the 24 hour point as I am not in the mood to spend a dollar more than I already have. (And yes it is the 2:55pm flight.)

rkkwan

Before you pay any extra money for anything, please keep in mind you're on a 2 hour flight in Club Europe on an A320 - which is basically convertible economy class seat with center seats blocked, with better food. Minimal legroom, and the seat is basically worse than domestic FC in N. America. There can be as little as 3 rows (12 seats) or as many as 52 on your flight, depending on load.

Please take a look at this photo before spending extra for a seat assignment:

http://www.airliners.net/photo/Briti...167951aca0ab31

Gardyloo

<i>I guess one needs a sense of humor to think that after paying more than $4000 for a business class ticket...</i>

Question: are you returning by air or maybe cruising? If by air and also using AA flight numbers, then you'd easily qualify for AA Platinum elite status if you sign up for what's called the "Platinum Challenge." You phone AAdvantage Customer Service and tell them you want to enroll on the Platinum Challenge. (There's a fee, I believe $200, but really worth it.)

The "challenge" is to earn 10,000 elite qualifying points within three months. The points must be earned on AA-numbered flights (so both AA "metal" and codeshare flights are fine.)

Elite qualifying <i>points</i> are not the same as elite qualifying <i>miles.</i> Elite points are a function of the fare class paid - most deep discount economy fares earn 1/2 EQP per flown mile, higher-fare economy earns 1 EQP/mi, and full fare economy, business and first class all earn 1 1/2 points/mile.

DFW-LHR-LIS comes in at 5722 flown miles, so you'll earn 8583 points on the outbound flights alone. Another 934 flown miles will get you the needed 1417 EQP to hit the 10K, so if you're returning, no sweat.

You'll earn 1 "redeemable" mile per flown mile, plus a 25% "cabin bonus" for flying in business class, so the outbound flights will earn 7150 miles +/- outbound. Coming back, starting with the flight on which you cross the 10,000 EQP mark, you'll also earn an additional 1 redeemable mile per mile flown, plus the 25% cabin bump, so from that point on, you'll be earning 200% miles plus any cabin bonuses. If the return trip is the same as outbound, you'll hit 10K points on the LIS-LHR segment, so you'd earn 225% miles for the whole return trip, for a total of 20,027 earned miles all in, almost enough for a "free" round trip ticket.

Your Platinum status, if you sign up after June 16, will last until the end of February 2014, after which you'll fall to Gold unless you re-qualify for Plat (50,000 miles or 50,000 points in a calendar year.)

As Plat (Oneworld Sapphire) you won't pay baggage fees, you'll qualify for free upgrade certificates for domestic flights (500 miles per "sticker," 4 stickers earned per 10,000 miles flying,) you'll get lounge access on overseas flights, get priority boarding, get to preselect seats on British Airways or Iberia with no fee, and numerous other perks, not to mention the 100% mileage bonus going forward. It's really worth the $200 sign-up fee.

http://www.flyerguide.com/wiki/index...lenge_%28AA%29

Just an observation.

Rastaguytoday

Gardyloo - Intereting.

I've been Platinum on and of for over 10 years, and I could never pry the BA locator out of AA.

At the moment, I'm lifetime Gold.

As a separate comment. I've never seen AA's FEBO meal service mentioned. I wonder how many people, beside you and rkkwan have even heard of it. It does affect my seat choices as AA tends to run out of first/business meals.

cary999

"...paying more than $4000 for a business class ticket, one must pay some more for the BA seat selection."

Yep, that's BA.
Just got back from flying to Africa (LAX-LHR-JNB) on them and will not fly BA again.

regards - tom

lovely2c

Gardyloo - You are so nice that I'm going to impose upon you and ask questions about your Platinum Challenge suggestion. I am at the AA gold level so I don't pay baggage fees, do get 500 mile stickers but find them difficult to use as I'm kind of low priority, and hope to never fly BA again. I'm guessing if I pursued the Challenge, my 500 mile stickers might become more useful but I'm not sure about that. I do have a Platinum Amex which gets me into Admirals Clubs even though I don't belong to the AC. Incidentally, I have taken a similar set of flights - connecting in Madrid to an AA flight operated by Iberia - and was given an advance seat reservation on the Iberia flight at the time of booking. I'd go through Madrid again if those Iberia pilots would ever call off their strike. Finally, I've almost given up accumulating AA miles.
In fact, I cancelled my Citi AAdvantage card because accumulating miles is much, much easier than using them. It's getting more and more difficult to use them. Given all the aforementioned, do you still think it's worth $200 to achieve the Platinum level? I just get so tired of being nicked and dimed.

Gardyloo

Well, now that I know you're already Gold, know about stickers, have AC access and all that, I don't know if it's "worth it."

Obviously any sort of FF strategy involves a degree of risk/reward speculation. If you're moving your flying away from AA/Oneworld, then obviously no, it might not be worth it. I don't think anybody is going to argue that mileage redemptions on AA metal have gotten tougher since they went into bankruptcy, but they will come out of bankruptcy sooner or later, and may very well offer incentives for elite FF members to travel more when they do (that's occurred with other airlines in similar circumstances.) But the crystal ball is certainly cloudy for the time being.

The double-mileage bump alone would make it "worth it" to me. Even if redemptions involve having to pay BA its fuel surcharge extortion sometimes, AA's program is still the best in the business IMO - by a long shot. If you know how to work the system just a little (e.g. using third party award availability searches) you can still do very well with AA miles. I'm currently planning a fairly short-notice trip for my wife and me to go to France next month, and with really minimum effort I'm locating first- and business-class mileage seats that work with our dates. Just one anecdote, of course.

To me, the small bump in expenditure that you'd have to pay for the Plat challenge in the context of a paid business class itinerary to Europe would be relatively small potatoes IF I could foresee using those additional perks/miles in the near future. And maybe that's the key - having something of a strategy that extends a couple of years might be useful. (Pay this year, gain status, redeem next, etc.) We've been using such a strategy for a few years now and it's really helped rationalize and organize our travel spend.

Whether that would work in your case I don't know, but it might be worth considering.

RJames

Rastaguytoday, I too am a platinum member and have been a plt member since 2003. I've never obtained status using a plt challenge. I fly BA a lot and I have never had any problems getting the BA record locator from AA. When I fly BA and want to put my miles into my BA account instead of AA, I can secure a seat and get lounge access with my status and BA will credit the miles to which ever account I want.

I seldom fly domestic flights, and have plenty on upgrade stickers. FEBO service doesn't influence my choice of seat when I fly in business on domestic flights, after all it's just airplane food.

lovely2c, gardyloo has given you excellent advice. If you fly in business class most of the time one perk you won't be taking advantage of is lounge access, as your ticket already entitles you to that. The 100% bonus miles is what you'd benefit the most from. If you know you'll be flying on AA and One World, I would sign up for the challenge. If you get plt status on your upcoming trip, you will soft land to gold if you don't requalify for plt (Gardyloo has mentioned this already), assuming your flight is after June 16 you'd have plt status until Feb 2014 and gold until Feb 2015 if you don't requalify. That's an extra year of no baggage fees baggage fees and the other gold benefits you already have.

Ray_Seva

My wife, our two kids (10 & 6) and I are flying BA from DFW to LHR in two weeks. We bought out tickets three months ago (economy/World Traveller) and were told that we can only select our seats three days in advance. It costs $38 per person to be able to pre-select your seat. THat's a lot of money for us (we're not wealthy). I am worried that we won't be able to sit together. I will NEVER fly BA again because of this stupid rule.

lovely2c

I'm adding this comment because I think the subject may be of interest to a number of people who read this site. I called AA to get the BA reference number and was at first told it could not be found. After some polite insistence on my part, I was given a six letter/number code. When I tried to use it on BA.com, I found it wasn't valid. I called AA back and was told the BA number flashes by very rapidly on their monitors and the AA reps can't grasp it quickly enough. I asked to speak to a supervisor. The rep then said she would try to catch it and gave me a code. I could then see that the first rep mistook an I for a 1 and a Z for a 2. Note that BA uses neither the numerals 1 nor 0 in their codes. Anyhow, the second one worked and I found that I could get an advance seat reservation for $30.

julia1

Ray_Seva: Because you are a family group, you can select seats three days in advance. Most passengers, except elites and those paying for advance seat selection, have to wait until online check-in at 24 hours before departure. As many, many people flying economy either aren't elites or won't shell out $38 per person to select seats in advance, you should have a pretty good chance of getting your seats together.