The easiest thing to do is to phone each of BA and QF reservations to get them to put your FF number into the booking. Each of them ought to be able to do it for both legs (little things like this show how close the BA/QF working relationship is at a normally-invisible level) but it would be as well to check with both airlines that they have got it.

When you talk to each airline, you can also talk to them about the possibility of pre-allocating a seat. Just before you speak to them, go to www.seatmap.com, put in your flight details (class Y will do for your flights) and check the seat map to see what is currently available for pre-allocation. BA will only pre-allocate about 30% of the cabin, so there comes a point fairly early on when you can no longer do that, but they will take requests - be as specific as you can.

You can also look online once you've done all that - the QF FF website allows you to check your future bookings and will pull up any bookings that have your QF FF number in it. Also www.checkmytrip.com should also show you the FF numbers that have been entered into the booking.

Finally, take your card with you when you travel, and show it at check-in - you should be greeted with the comforting words that the number's already in the system, and it should show on your boarding passes too.

You don't say when you're flying, but I think you will be pretty unlucky not to have seat back screens on both flights. I think that conversion cycle has pretty much finished for both BA and QF.

[This message has been edited by Globaliser (edited 06-05-2003).]