American Airlines: Entering AA FF number on booking & accessing lounge with QANTAS card

[ScottM]

G'day,

I have QF Lifetime Gold status. I was wondering if it is possible when flying in the US to book (paying) a flight and enter my AA frequent flyer number to accrue miles with AA but then use my QF Lifetime Gold FF card to access the Admirals Club?

i.e. My ticket would say I was AAdvantage nobody.

 

[lilkid28]

Enter QF number first so it shows on boarding pass to access lounge. Once you are in lounge, change the FF number online or change it at Lounge desk or when at Departure gate helpdesk.

 

[NM]

In theory you should be entitled to access. However, in practice it will be up to the interpretation of the lounge agent of the day. I have found some QF agents in Australia are now reluctant to change FF numbers/programs on a flight where the boarding pass is already issued, trying to prevent people using one membership for lounge access and then changing to another for flight credit. But I have not ready anything on QFF or AAdvantage program terms and conditions that addresses this scenario. My gut feeling is that you are more likely to have success in the USA by showing a QFF card along with your boarding pass than you would in Australia. I would normally hand over the baording pass and QFF card together and make a comment such as "Here is my Qantas membership card for lounge access, but I am crediting this flight to my AAdvantage account because your programs is much better than the Qantas program and I don't need any more Qantas points at the moment."

Note that Admirals Club is a separate program to AAdvantage and the AAdmirals Club staff are generally much less concerned about which program your flight is crediting to than Qantas lounge staff seem to be.

But as I noted initially, there is no guarantee and no program rule you can point to that provides definitive ruling on status-based access when crediting to a different program.

 

[ja1]

Unless the lounge was full or you had a particularly persnickety dragon, I can't imagine this would be any kind of issue.

Would second what NM said in that if you have AA printed on BP but present QFF card along with said BP, they should be able to make the logic leap that:

- Status lets you in - assuming you have a BP that shows you are flying
- BP establishes you are flying

Worst case they could change things around at the desk if access to the lounge was more important that points?