Question RE: Seat selection AA

[btkw]

Hi All,

I'm a long time reader of this forum, first time poster. Fantastic info available here so thanks for all the freely available advice!

I have a question and couldn't find an answer elsewhere, so just wondering if anyone knows...

About to head off to the US and have 2 domestic flights with AA in J. I'm WP flying with my partner who is NB.
I am able to select my seats on QF there and back and in one AA flight which has a QF number. One flight however is not a codeshare flight and I am unable to pre-select seats for this flight. I thought Emerald allowed some seat selection with partner airlines? Not a big deal, just curious.

Cheers!

 

[serfty]

I have got around this in the past by finding the AA booking reference for the same travel and use that for seat selection using AA.com.

If you have an AAdvantage account, you can log into that, go to "My Reservation" and enter you Name, flight number, flight origin and date.

You can then select seats. Don't forget to record the AA SABRE PNR.

 

[btkw]

Thanks Sertfy, your post is a bit beyond my acronym knowledge.

My status is earned on a lot.... of domestic QF Y travel and has been for years. As such, I'm not very experienced with travel in the US. I noticed on the OW website that even flying J/F on AA domestically does not allow lounge access. Seems odd if you fork out for that service. Thankfully I read WP allows access domestically. Interested as to why in this fare class on AA you have no lounge access whatsoever without... status. Sorry, probably a really basic question amongst all you FF elite.

 

[serfty]

Welcome to AFF.

American Airlines (AA) don't allow their own Sapphire or Emeralds lounge access on Domestic North American itineraries unless they have "Admirals Club Access" (AA equivalent of Qantas Club) - they will for elites of other oneworld airlins such as Qantas Gold and Platinum.

Back to the issue at hand. Qantas use the "Amadeus" reservation system or GDS (Global Distribution System). Your Qantas booking reference is actually an Amadeus booking reference. This reference is also called a "Passenger Name Record" or PNR.

American Airlines use a different GDS - it is called SABRE. When you have a Qantas booking on an AA flight number there will exist at least two PNR's; one will be the Amadeus PNR for Qantas and another will be a different PNR for the AA SABRE record.

You can call American Airlines on 07 3329 6060 and ask for the AA PNR for your journey. You will need to provide your name and flight details.

Using the AA SABRE PNR you should be able to select seats on AA flights using the following link: Unavailable

It will ask you to either log on or continue without logging on. If you don't have an AAdvantage account, you can click the latter.