Several months ago, I found award space for round trip flights from Orlando to Austin on American Airlines. Since this was considered “saver” award space, it was bookable using 9,000 BA Avios for each segment (36,000 Avios for two round trip tickets.)
I was thrilled to finally use the Avios I earned back in 2016 during a lucrative credit card promotion. After earning the signup bonus, American shut down saver availability on non-stop flights leaving me with a bunch of Avios and no way to use them. During the pandemic, American opened up saver space so I jumped on the chance to use our points to go from MCO-AUS-MCO. I’m glad I did because with domestic travel recovering, AA’s award space is back to being hard to find.
That was several months ago and now that we’re getting closer to the trip I’m making sure that all of the details are hammered down. Most importantly, I needed to attach our frequent flyer numbers to our tickets.
Since I booked through British Airways, our American AAdvantage numbers aren’t attached to the booking. I went to the British Airways website and tried to add our frequent flyer information. I was able to add my Avios number, but I couldn’t add Sharon’s AA number.
This was actually the most important thing because she has the CitiBusiness / AAdvantage Platinum Select Mastercard which provides us with one free checked bag and (hopefully) early boarding.
I gave it several tries but the number would never stick. So, time for Plan B.
I went to the American Airlines website and tried to look up the flight. However, the record locator number provided by British Airways couldn’t be found by American. This is a long-standing problem that you’ll find when using points in one program to book flights on a partner airline. If they use different systems, you can have different PNRs for each airline. I could always call British Airways to get the AA record locator number but BA has horrendous hold times under normal circumstances and I can’t imagine it’s gotten any better over the past year.
Back to the AA website. Below the flight search box, there’s a place where you can type in your ticket number. I just needed to find my ticket number. Back to the British Airways website. After logging in, I checked my flights and clicked on Manage My Booking.
Floating over the bottom of the page, there’s a menu button for Manage my booking.
From there, click on Print/email e-ticket receipt.
On this page, after the payment information, you’ll see the ticket number. For British Airways, the number should start with 125.
With this information, go back to the American Airlines website and put in the ticket number (without any dashes.) This should allow you to pull up your reservation for your American flights. From there, you can add your AAdvantage number, KTN number (for TSA Precheck access) and select or change seat assignments.
The process of looking up your info is easier on the British Airways smartphone app. On the main page, you’ll see your flight. Tap to the next screen to find the ticket info.
To summarize how to find your American Airlines PNR when booking with British Airways.
- Log into BA and look up your reservation
- Find your ticket number
- Head to the AA website and enter the ticket number
- Pull up the reservation, making a note of your AA PNR.
- Add your AAdvantage number (if you want) so the reservation will show up when you log into your AA account.
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This post first appeared on Your Mileage May Vary
13 comments
I booked an AA flight with avios last week. It took some digging, but I was able to find my AA PNR under manage my booking without having to view the receipt.
I tried for a while but could only find my BA PNR.
you can also go to the FinnAir website and use your AA confirmation code to change any reservations’s oneworld FF # to an Advantage #
I second this, with a little more explanation. – I previously dinked around all of these blogs & Reddit trying to make this work, but none were that accurate or clear. Total pain.
Easiest way if you booked AA flights on BA with Avios is after booking, to just visit Finnair (finnair.com/us-en/manage) and click Manage Booking. Put in your Last name and BA Locator Number (that was emailed or showed up at time of booking). Then click on Passenger Details, then click on Update Details. From there you can add “add another frequent flyer number”. Add your AAdavantage # and hit save. Done. Then go to you AA app and your reservation will already be pulled up. From there you should be able to click on “Seats” to change/choose the seat location, etc. Super quick and easy!
Thanks. This worked great. Hate waiting on hold just to get PNR or arrange seats. A lot of good advice on this thread.
Thanks Gen. This worked really well.
You are a literal lifesaver. This is the only thing that worked for me I have tried every other workaround and waited on hold for 2 hours to try and get the AA confirmation number.
Again thank you so much Gens may your pillows be cold till your last day.
This did not work for me as the AA site would not accept the BA ticket number. But I finally found a solution. If you go to BA and select manage your booking, put in your BA confirmation number and proceed to find your flight. Your BA booking will pull up. Select the AA leg of your booking. Choose select/change your seat for the AA flight. On the next screen select View or Change Your Seat for this Flight. When you get to the page that asks you to tick a box consenting to your data being transferred by BA to AA for purposes of this transaction SCROLL DOWN past where it says Exit seat reservation. At the very bottom you will see both you BA and AA reference numbers. It really should not be this hard!
Thank you!!! Saved me hours on hold! Amazing that this is so difficult in 2021…
This method worked to find the AA PNR…thanks! However when I try to edit my details the area to change the loyalty number is greyed out. I was however able to add our KTNs and change our seats. So that’s a good start. BA won’t even allow me to wait on hold right now so I might just forget about it for this one way award flight. Probably more hassle to get the number attached than to board late and check carryons.
This worked.
The only thing that eventually worked for me was creating a free Check My Trip account and adding the BA confirmation there. At first, it continues to display the BA PNR, but after refreshing the screen, the confirmation code that was displayed changed, and sure enough, it was the correct AA code! I had already spent so much time on this booking because I was using a future travel voucher and then I had to correct a misspelled name, so I was desperately trying avoid more phone calls. I asked for the AA code via the BA web email form, explaining that I wanted to select the seat, and their response was not to worry about it because a seat had been assigned – I replied asking again so that I choose which seat, and they replied with the seat number but no AA code – I replied again, as politely as I could be, and received an apologetic response stating that my request had now been forwarded to the correct team, and I would get the info ASAP. After 10 days with nothing further, I finally found a reference to Check My Trip on a forum like this and couldn’t believe how easy it was after all the fruitless exchanges with BA.
Thanks Maxx the worked!