Seat Selection with American Airlines - but booked flights with Qantas

[Princess Fiona]

This is new (-ish as I have not tried for a while). Previously in my experience any ticket number that did not start with 001 was rejected outright.

[edit]
OK, it works on the APP, but not on the desktop.

I have the following bookmarked to look an AA reservation up using a desktop/Web browser. It still appears to only accept 001 ticket numbers:

Find your trip - Find a reservation - American Airlines

Find your trip on aa.com to check in online, change or cancel your reservation, add special requests, and redeem Trip or Flight Credit.

www.aa.com

[/edit]

Definitely works on the App.
I booked a last minute Award last month and was in the US at the time.
Put the ticket number in from the email PDF e-ticket and was immediately able to select a seat.
It populated the booking with the AA record locator and saved it to the App.

 

[djmcbuttar]

I can confirm the rj.com method worked for me. Just got our seats sorted for next year. Booked through Qantas, flying with AA. The BA route didn't work.

Post automatically merged: Dec 21, 2023

I can confirm the rj.com method worked for me. Just got our seats sorted for next year. Booked through Qantas, flying with AA. The BA route didn't work.

 

[porterble]

I'm trying to get this to work for AA flights on a QF PNR, at QF WP.
The AA website just shows me a fully occupied seat map, and RJ shows the availability but when selecting it gives a weird error:

• At least one of your specific seat requests could not be processed. (4631 - 68202)
• One of your seat requests cannot be confirmed. It can be due to a missing or invalid Frequent Card. (4636)
• Your service selection contains unavailable service(s). (119225)

 

[SYD]

I'm trying to get this to work for AA flights on a QF PNR, at QF WP.
The AA website just shows me a fully occupied seat map, and RJ shows the availability but when selecting it gives a weird error:

• At least one of your specific seat requests could not be processed. (4631 - 68202)
• One of your seat requests cannot be confirmed. It can be due to a missing or invalid Frequent Card. (4636)
• Your service selection contains unavailable service(s). (119225)

Have you been able to view/manage the booking on AA.com or using the AA app (as described above)?

The AA app and/or website is going to be more reliable than rj.com.

BTW, what fare type is the booking? Classic Reward or cash fare? Do you know the fare class it’s booked into?

 

[porterble]

Have you been able to view/manage the booking on AA.com or using the AA app (as described above)?

The AA app and/or website is going to be more reliable than rj.com.

BTW, what fare type is the booking? Classic Reward or cash fare? Do you know the fare class it’s booked into?

Have tried through both AA.com and the AA app, both display a seat map with all seats marked as Unavailable.

RJ shows available seats, but fails with the above errors on trying to allocate them.

QF just says "Seatmap unavailable"

They are all cash fare H class seats on AA on a RTW booked through QF.

The only thing i can think of is that there is a problem with the AA system after they cancelled my original JFK-LAX flight, and ive been rebooked on a different set of legs. Oddly enough it seems that one of the RJ allocations (DFW-DEN) for my (LGA-DFW-DEN) route has stuck, but not the LHR-JFK or LGA-DFW legs.

 

[porterble]

Had a chat with the QF Business staff in BNE on my way through last week, and they couldn’t see anything in Amadeus either.

Time to call AA I think.

 

[porterble]

Spent far too long on hold with AA, so gave up. But had a change in my flight times again, which led to having to select all my seats all over again. Noticed this on the QF website now:

Quite weird.

 

[madrooster]

Spent far too long on hold with AA, so gave up. But had a change in my flight times again, which led to having to select all my seats all over again. Noticed this on the QF website now:


Quite weird.

I take it you booked on the AA AU website?

 

[porterble]

I take it you booked on the AA AU website?

No. Booked via QF, with AA legs through the US. Rebooked US legs via QF phone when AA cancelled my JFK-LAX sector.

 

[SYD]

No. Booked via QF, with AA legs through the US. Rebooked US legs via QF phone when AA cancelled my JFK-LAX sector.

I’d call QF. They should be able to select seats for you.

From a recent experience myself and it should come as a no surprise but the QF and AA systems can get a bit confused with schedule changes and different flights are rebooked.

Slightly long winded, but last year, I had a QF J booking SYD-YVR//YUL-ORD-LAX-SYD. The return flights were all AA metal but QF codes. Being J, no issue selecting seats over and back but AA cancelled the ORD-LAX sector and the next best available option I could select online via Qantas.com was YUL-DFW-SYD (AA/QF flight numbers). Once changed and re-ticketed, I went back into the AA app and selected seats for that new sector YUL-DFW. A few weeks before taking those return flights, I noticed that the original YUL-ORD flight was still in the AA system (in addition to the YUL-DFW flight several hours later and I could still select seats for that original flight as well as as the new flight!). Needless to say, I was concerned that AA might cancel all those return flights if we “no showed” for the YUL-ORD sector (which was still operating as originally scheduled). I rang AA and they couldn’t see it and told me to call QF. Spoke to QF and they confirmed that the ghost of the earlier flight was there but I was confirmed on the alternate flight - as ticketed and as visible on QF website/app and other Amadeus websites.

I can only guess that when booking via QF and there are AA sectors, the underlying AA PNR is hooked to that first sector. If there are changes, that hook remains (same PNR)?

Anyway, if I’d not accessed the AA system, I would have been blissfully unaware and needn’t worried.

 

[madrooster]

From a recent experience myself and it should come as a no surprise but the QF and AA systems can get a bit confused with schedule changes and different flights are rebooked.

With QF/AA there are often issues with PNR desynchronisation when AA mess with their flights. Ideally, as you say, it is best cleaned up to avoid an accidental no-show scenario. I once had a PNR with 6 duplicates of the one city pair! That was fun to clean up.

 

[porterble]

I’d call QF. They should be able to select seats for you.

From a recent experience myself and it should come as a no surprise but the QF and AA systems can get a bit confused with schedule changes and different flights are rebooked.

Slightly long winded, but last year, I had a QF J booking SYD-YVR//YUL-ORD-LAX-SYD. The return flights were all AA metal but QF codes. Being J, no issue selecting seats over and back but AA cancelled the ORD-LAX sector and the next best available option I could select online via Qantas.com was YUL-DFW-SYD (AA/QF flight numbers). Once changed and re-ticketed, I went back into the AA app and selected seats for that new sector YUL-DFW. A few weeks before taking those return flights, I noticed that the original YUL-ORD flight was still in the AA system (in addition to the YUL-DFW flight several hours later and I could still select seats for that original flight as well as as the new flight!). Needless to say, I was concerned that AA might cancel all those return flights if we “no showed” for the YUL-ORD sector (which was still operating as originally scheduled). I rang AA and they couldn’t see it and told me to call QF. Spoke to QF and they confirmed that the ghost of the earlier flight was there but I was confirmed on the alternate flight - as ticketed and as visible on QF website/app and other Amadeus websites.

I can only guess that when booking via QF and there are AA sectors, the underlying AA PNR is hooked to that first sector. If there are changes, that hook remains (same PNR)?

Anyway, if I’d not accessed the AA system, I would have been blissfully unaware and needn’t worried.

Interesting. I had a look again today on the AA system and i can see my ghost JFK-LAX flight still in the system, along with the new LGA-DFW-DEN=LAX routing. Time to give QF a call again.

 

[porterble]

Gave QF a call and they could see the ghost flights (multiple) in the system for each time that AA messed with the flight. They have allocated me seats, but nothing spectacular sadly. Will see how it goes closer to time.

 

[Fermax]

I can confirm this method:

• Download American Airlines app
• Login as Guest
• Select Find Trip
• Enter name and Ticket Number from Qantas booking PDF (the app didn't accept the hyphen, but worked with the complete ticket number)
• This displayed the 6-character booking code (in the header)
• I then used this code in Manage Trips on the AA website

I was then able to select seats for the AA portion of the QF-booked trip.