You're absolutely right. I should be able to do that at the gate. However, I guess I just prefer getting the BP sooner rather than later and worry that the seat will be somehow reassigned in the meantime. Part of this "fear" (don't worry, not really, keeping perspective here ) is based on prior experience. We previously did this route with my infant daughter and had a bassinet seat reserved with Qantas. However, AA totally messed it up at check-in and gave us different seats, which meant that it had to be fixed at the Qantas gate in LAX. It did get fixed, but not until the last minute, because the gate staff typically don't want to do any seating changes on the BNE flight before the SYD and MEL flights have departed. So, long story short, I guess I'm just hoping that was a glitch and that the electronic systems line up this time!