Help - bassinet seat booking Qantas/AA. Anyone have any idea?

[Mattmcm]

Hi there,

I'm new here but have seen lots of helpful advice as a viewer.

Hoping someone may be able to help with my situation!

I'm trying to:
Pre-book seats for my family, including purchasing a bassinet seat on Qantas flights.

But:
The flights were booked through American Airlines, so I can't do this on the Qantas website (or with their call centre team), but when I speak to American Airlines call centre team they seem to be able to book seats, but the bassinet seats are blocked by Qantas (presumably because you have to pay extra to book them - which I'm trying to do!)

More details:
Our end destination is Orlando - both ways we have a short domestic flight in America operated by AA, and a long international flight operated by Qantas. We can book seats on the AA flights, and bassinet is not important since the flights are so short - but the international flights we would love to book a bassinet as we will be flying with a 6 month old, as well as two other young kids.

I'm in a bit of a pickle - no one at the Qantas or AA call centre seems to really understand the issue or be able to help, and no travel agents seem to be able to help since I haven't booked with them.

Anybody have any ideas? I'd love to hear them.

Thanks for your help!
Matt

 

[Seat0B]

Ok I’ll have a go. You don’t usually have to pay extra to get a bassinet as long as you have an infant ticket.

Do your flights have a QF flight number? I no assume it’s code share with AA. If so, perhaps you need to call AA and try asking for the Qantas PNR (the 6 letters and numbers that identify your flight booking) so you can log in to the Qantas web site and do seat selection. Or at least be able to call Qantas and quote this number so they can find your booking and get a bassinette seat allocated - assuming they are not all taken already. The PNRs are often different for different airlines so it can get hard to get the websites to work. It is very frustrating trying to get codeshare seats sorted but persevere until you get through.

And welcome to AFF!

 

[JohnK]

I've never had an issue pre-allocating a bassinet with QF, VA, EK, TG, SQ etc.

As mentioned find booking reference of the operating airline and call them. In fact there were times I didn't have the booking reference but still pre-allocated bassinet by calling operating airline.

 

[Seat0B]

How did you go @Mattmcm