Question re seat selection for QF flight booked via AA

[aussiejohn]

I have just used the last of my AAdvantage points to book a flight home from the UK - LHR-Mel on QF10 in May.

Booked the flight via the AA call centre in Brisbane - who I must say were very helpful and courteous in finding a flight etc.

Is there a way I can go in and choose a seat now rather than wait till online check-in time 24 hours before and take pot luck?

I have tried going into the QF site and putting in my AA PRN but it is not coming up.

Surely QF would have a record of the flight in it's computers?

I'm a bit mystified by this.

I guess I will have to do online checkin via AA and not QF when the time comes?

Grateful for any advice on this.

Thanks.

 

[serfty]

AA use SABRE for their GDS; Qantas use Amadeus - the AA reference will not work on Qantas.com.

Arm yourself with your flight details and call Qantas.

They will be able to provide you with your booking reference.

Unless you have status with Qantas (or maybe oneworld) you would ordinarily not be able to select a seat online; you would need to call and hope they have not reached their allocation limit. In any case you would still be able to select online seven days before the flight.

 

[NM]

When making a booking through AAdvantage, ask the agent to provide you the Qantas booking reference. It is different from the AA booking reference. The agent will happily provide this. You can then use the QF manage my booking option on the QF web site.

Add your OneWorld FF membership details (with the highest status) to get the best seat availability for selection. Note that if you don't have sufficient status to be allow to select seats then the option will not be available to you. After selecting, you can change the FF details if you want to use a different program for earning/recognition for the flight.

Also note that using the Brisbane call centre will cost you a higher booking fee than using the USA call cantre. The USA centre only charge US$25 per booking while the AU centre fee is in A$ and is quite a bit more. For this reason I always book via the USA centre.

 

[aussiejohn]

Thank you for helping me out on this one.

I have just spoken to Qantas and they gave me the QF PNR. I also asked about seat selection as I have no QF/OW status (Bronze FF).

The lady was very helpful and assigned a seat for me there and then and I have managed to get 80A on the A380 which I am happy about. She did say seats were subject to change? First time I have been told that in many years of travelling. Anyway, can but hope it will stay assigned to me.

 

[futaris]

NB, I Tried to get a QANTAS Booking reference for an AAdvantage booking through QANTAS. Agent said that they can't retrieve a booking by name and flight number due to the privacy laws. And they couldn't do it through the 001- ticket number, as it wasn't a QANTAS ticket. Probably the agent didn't know how to do it, or was too lazy, especially today with the Ash delays, etc.

Ended up ringing AAdvantage and getting the QANTAS Amadeus reference through them within 5 minutes.

 

[serfty]

...

Ended up ringing AAdvantage and getting the QANTAS Galileo reference through them within 5 minutes.

Galileo?

Qantas use Amadeus and AA use SABRE as base GDS's.

 

[wandering_fred]

Galileo?

Qantas use Amadeus and AA use SABRE as base GDS's.

I believe that the Australian version of the AA website uses a different (nonSabre) front end. Hence the different results one sees when making flight queries.

YMMV

Fred

 

[serfty]

I believe that the Australian version of the AA website uses a different (nonSabre) front end. Hence the different results one sees when making flight queries.

YMMV

Fred

AA Oz portal uses Amadeus, so does their portal for Germany. The UK one uses SABRE.