Cathay Pacific Asia Miles - Seat assignments when using award from AA?

I have an award ticket booked with AA miles but on CX. I called CX and got the PNR number but it isn't coming up on CX Manage My Bookings.

The CSR lady says she can't book seats for me as it's an award ticket. Any way around this?

Are all the economy seats the new kind that slide forward instead of reclining?

BNE-HKG-MNL-HKG-LHR

The reason that it may not show up is that AA rarely will put your CX MPC number into the reservation. They however can get seat assignment. Can't answer your 3rd question though

Your BNE and LHR sectors should be the new slide forward seats. As for the HKG MNL sector, it really depends. As always everything is subject to last min changes

I also had this experience a few weeks ago - I think I got the "most official" answer from MPO since I kept asking them for clarification and they did check with supervisors etc.

in short - officially they are not supposed to touch any of these AAdv bookings, not to do/change ASR, not to add MPO #, etc, although "technically" their systems would allow them to do so.

details:

I had 2 J tickets issued on KA with AAdv miles, wanted to book bassinet seats.

called MPO and agent #1 retrieved my booking. said it's AAdv award booking so he could not do ASR for me, everything has to come from AA. he could not even add MPO # to that booking so that I could do online check-in. I said I couldn't quite understand why CX/KA as the final operating airline of the flight could not make any changes to it - but he did not budge at all.

but, he was not just trying to be unhelpful - in fact, on the contrary, he helped me call the AAdv US # right on the spot and told the AAdv staff what to do to help me request a seat. he actually said he told the AAdv staff which exact bassinet seats were still available so they should just request those. but he said I needed to wait until the next morning before my seats would be confirmed (I called in the evening, so it sounded like there's some manual work needed in CX after they got the "request" from AAdv and that would need to wait until office hours the next morning).

but, of course, things never work that well. seats as expected not confirmed until the next morning, and when it's confirmed, it's actually 2 non-bassinet seats. I actually asked agent #1 the previous night already, what happened if what's eventually confirmed isn't what I prefer, could I change to a specific seat. he actually said no, they can't do anything, I just had to ask AA to repeatedly request until I get what I want (although he wasn't really able to explain how this is different from a pure lucky draw).

so the next morning when the seats were confirmed I called to request to change to bassinet seats. agent #2 was able to change it right on the spot. but I then asked her why she could do it in 10 seconds while on the previous night it took me a total of ~30 mins trying to convince agent #1 to help me but he didn't budge and instead put me on hold while he called AAdv himself on my behalf.

agent #2 said she would look into this (+ listened to the recording from the previous night). she got back to me after a couple of hours. she then claimed she actually was able to help me change the ASR, BUT in the process she actually needed to call AAdv afterwards to make sure AAdv has sent a request (or update their booking) too so that the bookings in AA's and CX's systems were in sync (although I'm not 100% convinced she really did that - as she literally was able to help me change the seat in 10 seconds). but at least now she made it a consistent story/process vs. what agent #1 did - so I think that's the "official answer/process" they should follow.

BTW - during the process I also found that I was able to retrieve the booking on CX.com and add the MPO # myself - although agent #1 refused to do it for me. I asked agent #2 why I could do it on CX.com myself while they claimed that CX cannot do this at all, she couldn't quite explain - so I guess again it's something "technically possible", but manually they just would not do for you as it's an AAdv booking.

BTW - during the process I also found that I was able to retrieve the booking on CX.com and add the MPO # myself - although agent #1 refused to do it for me. I asked agent #2 why I could do it on CX.com myself while they claimed that CX cannot do this at all, she couldn't quite explain - so I guess again it's something "technically possible", but manually they just would not do for you as it's an AAdv booking.

I tried again and got this:

Sorry, a reservation could not be found with the information you have provided. Please check your booking reference number again or enter your eTicket Number.

I went to "Manage my booking"-Non-member and put my name and CX PNR # in and it doesn't come up. Why would it not come up under their own record locater?

Call back again to the CX reservations #, and tell them the date and flights you are on.

As an FYI, I just booked 2 J seats from SFO-HKG-BKK-HKG-LAX for this christmas and was a seats able to get my seats assigned without any problems.

BTW - I was also able to view the assigned seats using the Manage my Flights feature on the CX websites once the seats were assigned by the agent.

Hope this helps....CN.

When I used my AA miles for a CX flight, I got both AA and CX's PNR. I called CX and got my seats. IIRC I saw my booking on CX as well.