Double-A

I just booked an economy award ticket on an Iberia airbus A340, going from BOS-MAD using my AA miles, and my reservation shows that I have been assigned a seat in row 8. My question is that every seating chart that I have looked at on various web sites, show row 8 being busines class seat. Does anyone have any experience on this flight and do you know if that seat is in Business class or coach?

UncleDude

On the Old 3 Class A340 it was indeed a Business Class seat, but on the Two Class A340, I'm sorry to advise its the first row of Coach/Y Class.

fly747first

Right, all of Iberia's A340-300s now have 42 seats in "BusinessPlus" (rows 1-7). As mentioned by UncleDude, row 8 is the first row of Economy. The leg room there is decent, or at least it seemed that way from my seat in row 6.

pbohannon

My question, and potentially one more germane to this forum directly, is how are you able to book your Iberia seat assignment? I've taken eight trips on IB now, each time using AA miles, and never had my seat assignment displayed on aa.com. When acquiring the IB PNR from an AA rep, their own website has never shown me the entire reservation. So, how did you get at this information after having used AAdvantage miles to book your trip?

OCJoe

I just booked 2 Biz class seats from LAX-Gran Canaria, via JFK/MAD and returning via MAD/LHR using AA miles. When I held the reservation, I was able to reserve my seats on the AA metal segments but not on IB. When I finally ticketed, I asked the ticketing agent if I had to call Iberia for my seat assignments on their segments. She said, "No, I can do that." When I access my reservation on AA.com, I am able to see my IB seat assignments. Mind you, I cannot change the seats, just see where we are sitting.

Maybe this is something new and the AA and IB computers "talk" to each other now? When was your most recent IB trip?

Double-A

This is the first time I ever used my miles, all I did was call the AAdvantage 1-800 number, and and the agent that assisted me allowed me to pick my seats. I also paid for a second seat, maybe that had something to do with it.

Thanks for the info guys, hopefully the seat won't be to bad.

pbohannon

There were a couple of options as to which thread to bump, but maybe this one is reasonably appropriate. I've got another trip on IB next week and I have questions about seating assignments. I've called IB to request the seats I prefr on their A340 and they've been surprisingly helpful in confirming those seats. After the phone calls (multiple just to be sure), they've sent e-mails with the seat numbers and I can also verify the seat assignments at the itinerary website utilized by IB, checkmytrip.com. For some reason I couldn't leave well enough alone and while on the phone with the EXP desk asked them to pull my seat numbers into my aa.com reservation profile. The agent said she would make a request to IB, and 5 minutes later I had seats showing on aa.com but they were not my preferred seats. Fearing the actual seat assignments had changed, I called IB and indeed, the seats showing on aa.com were what IB's call center showed also. After some negotiation I got my original seats back, though aa.com obviously still shows the modified seating assignments generated by the EXP desk's request.

My question is, with aa.com showing seats I don't prefer but IB and their aforementioned itinerary website showing seats I do prefer, which will I be given upon check-in? I'll be checking in at an AA station and generally they're able to issue IB boarding passes.

I did ask an EXP agent about this but she seemed confused and I let it be. Clearly I shouldn't have even asked for my seats to be pulled in, but I was hoping someone might have some insight as to how the seating assignments will be pulled at actual check-in.

Thanks for any advice!

miamigrad

I would leave well enough alone if your preferred seats are showing in IB's systems.

I recently took a trip that included BA. Same type of thing, though my BA seats didn't show at all on aa.com. They were confirmed on BA using the Manage My Booking (MMB) tool. Since I chose my preferred seats on BA, and they showed in BA's systems, I didn't make any additional request of AA.

While I would like to see a more seamless integration of itineraries across all OW airlines, I've come to ignore these annoyances for exactly the reason you've described. I find that any "tinkering" I do tends to mess things up more than help.

Safe and happy travel!

hillrider

AA and IB are housed in different systems: Sabre the former, Amadeus the latter. Seat assignment updates never flow upwards across systems (i.e. an update in the IB system will never update what shows on Sabre and therefore AA.com)

At check-in with AA, AA's system sends the request for check-in (via EDIFACT) to IB's system, who processes the request and then uses the AA system as a blind printer for printing the boarding pass. Therefore the AA system isn't involved and whatever seat is in the IB system is what you're going to get.

Airline systems are 70s technology, and simple things as keeping everything in sych is not implemented!

pbohannon

This is a really neat reply especially for those of us who enjoy knowing the intricacies of how the systems interact (or, more aptly sometimes, don't!). Thanks for the help!

EdV

Might be a stupid question here but I thought one should check in with IB when flying IB: why would one check-in with AA? Only time I can think of is if they're connecting onto IB after AA. ie, I'm flying BOS-MAD on IB (but with AA codeshare): I assume we should checkin at IB desk right, given they are in different terminals?

pbohannon

Well, you described my use-case perfectly anyway. I fly from a non-IB station on AA to connect with IB, so it's very convenient for me to check-in at once and not have to deal with the IB desk at BOS, MAD, etc. Every now and then if there's no line I'll go to their desk to get an IB boarding pass for fun. On two occasions I can remember the AA station from which I was checking in was unable to print a pass and I thought I'd have to go to IB downline, but my connecting AA station downline was able to accommodate me in the end.

billgrates3

AA seems to be integrating more with certain partners, for example, the aagents can now directly assign seats on BA flights, and they show up in your PNR online. Last year, you had to call BA or do it yourself online if you were PLT or EXP. (GLD and non-elite still cannot book seats more than 24 hrs before departure on BA).

eolesen

Partly true. IB houses their inventory in Amadeus, but they have their own internal reservation system (which is why you'll see different Amadeus and Iberia record locators on some documents...).

The only way this becomes bulletproof is if AA moves to Amadeus as rumored.

Book a multi-airline itinerary on HA, AA & AS, even though all three are Sabre hosted, you wind up with three PNR's.

AY, BA & QF already share a single PNR on Amadeus, and the same will hold true when CX and MX convert to Amadeus.