One of the things that has bugged me for a VERY long time when booking AA code-shares on the British Airways website is the inability to reserve a seat without digging into CheckmyTrip, then digging through the Amadeus Passenger Name Record (PNR) BA issues for a magical AA PNR and finally chucking the details into AA.com to get a result.
And that’s if I’ve been good.
On worse days, I’ve had to do this… repeatedly until check-in time.
Not a good passenger experience in the least.
Visually in the past, when trying to assigns seats on the BA site for an AA flight, you got this:
Captured 2011.
Now, things are a LITTLE different. When you examine your booking you get this option!
Whoa! Seat selection possible!!!
Clicking this brings up your seat assignment if it exists, and offer you to take you through to the AA Manage My Booking tool without the need for knowing your AA PNR.
Click the red button, and it’ll transfer you over…
And if you look hard enough – yes, the AA PNR Details are visible…
Click Reserve seats, and you’re transferred to the AA Manage my booking system, where you can reserve seats
Tada!
From here, it’s a simple matter of assigning seats as normal, depending on your preferences (or not).
So instead of a lot of digging and hoping, it’s now 5 direct clicks from British Airways Manage My Booking to assigning a seat on an American Airlines flight.
And yes, that’s one heck of an improvement.
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Do you know if this works for Alaskan flights as well?
I haven’t got a BA Code share on Alaskan to test sadly 🙁
The analogous task of getting a seat assignment on a BA flight booked as an AA codeshare through AA has been straightforward [thankfully for those of us in North America] for at least several years. There is a handy link in the AA reservation that takes you directly to the BA webpage [no knowledge of the BA PNR necessary] where seats can be assigned on the BA-operated flights. I’m glad to see that BA has added the same functionality.
Awesome! Thanks!