Thanks, Often1, your comments are insightful. It’s so tough, as a consumer, to know who/what to trust, especially when “confirmed” doesn’t exactly mean one is certain to be boarded on a flight and there can be so much confusing/conflicting information between the different entities involved. I’m going to try and locate some kind of basic primer on the airline industry…I’ve never seen anything like that in the FAQs here, but maybe there’s one buried somewhere…

The receipt I received from BR includes some payment information (redacted for credit card #), so I am hopeful the new carriers have been paid (by BR). Carriers plural, which brings a further question…my initial understanding was that the change to my itinerary was to KE for two segments, the latter operated by Garuda (but a codeshare or somehow or other still involving KE). Now it appears as if this is incorrect, and each segment is independent, the first with KE and the second with Garuda. If BR made a single payment for the reissue, can I rely that both KE and Garuda were paid?

I learned that my new flights are not codeshare from KE, when I called them directly. (I could not find a way to retrieve my ticket data from their website, even after creating a site/SKYPASS account, which I’ve noticed other FlyerTalk users comment upon.) The woman with whom I spoke found my records and said we are guaranteed for the flight and would be able to check-in, but she went on to say that the second segment is with Garuda only and so she could not speak to it/do anything about it. I then called Garuda and their rep found my records, said we are guaranteed for the applicable flight, but that my travelling partner is listed only as “pending” on the earlier KE flight! Who to trust?!? Since KE told me I am guaranteed, can I rest easy?!? Could there be any lag b/w Garuda’s database and KE’s, because it was mere minutes before that I had talked to KE. I suppose I’ll call KE one more time to ask them to re-confirm that we are both “ticketed”, since I can’t get that info online. (And I didn’t mention before b/c it was obviously not the case, but the entire time that I was only confirmed and not ticketed on the new flights, the BR database said my itinerary was “Ticketed”.)

Is it true that the “ticket number” stays the same across carriers and the data tied to the ticket number is the most reliable? (Never mind that when I called KE, they asked for my ticket number, which I didn’t have on hand and when I said I had the record locator, the woman said the record locator “is the same thing”.)

Is there a better way to improve transparency such that flyers can confirm their status with certainty?!? (Completely rhetorical…)