Originally Posted by PHCorkill

Hi britenbsas, thanks for your reply.

I had looked at the BA baggage allowance before booking, which is why I checked with AA what my allowance was. I could have booked the flight with a BA, IB or AA code, and chose an AA code because I was assured my luggage allowance would be as if on AA metal. The BA staff implied that AA could have tagged me as being entitled to two checked pieces if they had wanted to, that that facility existed on the system, but that they hadn't.

I could also have booked LHR-ORD-MIA-LPB all on AA metal without significantly extending my journey time (and had an 500 mile upgrade on the ORD-MIA leg), all on AA metal.

I knew that the Gold status does not have an equivalent with BA, and was not expecting to be able to use the fastrack at T5 (as I would have been able to at T3 if I had flown AA metal). As it happened T5 was all but deserted at the the time of my flight, lack of fast track was not a problem. Because I had BA boarding passes, my MIA-LPB pass did not have 'Priority Access' printed on it, so I had to swap it at Miami so I could join the priority lane there.

I was disappointed that I could not book a seat in advance as I consider this a major advantage of AA status. Normally, if you book on the BA site, you can pay a fee to choose a seat more than 24 hours in advance (regardless of status). However this option wasn't available to me on the website, and when I phoned BA I was told that this was because I had booked on the AA site, although I could log in and update my details etc on the BA site.

There are advantages in using BA codeshares (better in flight entertainment, complimentary drinks and leaving from T5) but I was trying to highlight the disadvantages too. These are not always apparent, and perhaps as the days go by they will be easier to spot.