jason38

Hello everyone sorry to first time post with this but i could use the forums expertise. So earlier today I called be to book bussiness class on aer lingus from Boston to Dublin. The British Airways person was very helpful found me two business class saver award seats and booked them for me and gave me a confirmation number etc. Everything seemed fine but I never received a confirmation email. I logged into my BA account and noticed my Avios were not deducted and I could see on my upcoming trips that I did have a trip to Ireland booked but still no email confirming. I called BA and was told that a mistake was made and that there in fact was no award availibility and that I would have to wait until Monday until thier award dept could look at it. They would not give me a straight answer as to whether my booking would be honored. Can BA do this even though I have a confirmation number and it appears in my account? What can I do as I had already begun booking my it itinerary in europe?

Also I really enjoy this forum and if anyone could give me some advice I would really appreciate it again thank you.

beckoa

Welcome to the posting side of Flyertalk jason38

As this is a BA award issue, we're relocating your post to the appropriate forum.

~beckoa, co-moderator Information Desk

corporate-wage-slave

Welcome to Flyertalk jason38, welcome to the BA forum. I'm sorry this has brought you here, but I hope it may be resolved OK for you. Please continue to participate here, this forum is an interesting, informative and entertaining part of the interweb.

It looks a bit odd expressed like this. It seems to me that the booking hasn't been ticketed yet, which is when you would get an email. This sometimes takes a while to complete, as does the removal of Avios, and at that point I would not be concerned, particularly for BA's own bookings which can take their own sweet time to ticket and there's rarely a problem.

However what does sometimes happen is that the ticketing was not completed by the timeline specified by Aer Lingus, and therefore the transaction falls over. Ticketing is a manual process if not done online, and is prone to issues/chaos by the back office. In which case the BAEC locator will still be visible but there is no e-ticket number. You sometimes get a bit of a clue about this via classic.checkmytrip.com though that is not a definitive test in itself.

If my theory is correct then BA needs to liaise with Aer Lingus to resolve this, which is why it may need to wait until Monday (or possibly Tuesday, there is a public holiday for parts of the UK this weekend) and there is generally an acceptance that when BA's ticketing fails then it's up to BA to sort something happens. So there's not much you can do but wait a few days until the liaison work can take place.

The usual place to spot this is Cathay, which sets aggressive timelines for ticketing confirmation of redemptions and BA often fail to get it all done in time.

MADPhil

I'm not sure how this might show up in MMB but on AA it will usually say "on request" for something that has to be manually completed. As C-W-S points out this is a holiday weekend so you may be stuck with chewing your finger nails until Tuesday. Good luck!