Originally Posted by
Ben_W
I recently booked a LHR-DOH return flight for my parents through BA (for a QA flight), as it was almost £100 cheaper than booking through QA.
A very common occurrence. When you're booking a codeshare flight, always check the prices on both the operating and marketing carriers' websites. Also, on carriers with different websites in different countries, you often find different prices on the same flights marketed by the same carrier in different countries. Start comparing the AA Hong Kong website prices with those displayed on the AA United States website for the same flights, and you'll see what I mean.
Originally Posted by
remdk
Ben_W you are experiencing a very common problem with seat allocation. This is a codeshare flight and you usually can only select seats if your ticket is for the operating carrier (QR in this case). In your case it is marketed as a BA flight and you cannot select seats on QR since BA is not the operating carrier.
Perhaps that's the case with BA/QR (I have no specific knowledge), but it is not at all the case with many/most other carriers. For example, I commute between BKK and BOS. When I fly on CX, sometimes I book it with an AA flight number and sometimes with a CX flight number, depending on which is cheaper. When I book it through AA, I can select seats on either AA or CX websites, regardless of whether my ticket reflects an AA or a CX flight number. And when I do xONEx RTW itineraries, I invariably book them through AA and use as many AA flight numbers as possible; but I can always select seats through AA even though the operating carrier is QR, CX, BA or JL.