I don't understand a word of the above. Not one.

If you wish to book an Avios award that will result in an AA metal flight, the correct way to do it is easy: just book on the British Airways site with NO British Airways frequent flier number, i.e, delete the auto-fill in and leave that space blank.

Then go to the "choose seats" area on that BA reservation, at the end of the booking process. You'll then see the AA record locator (bottom left, I think). Open AA.com, enter that record locator, and fill in all your data, starting with your AA frequent flier number. That's it.

I've done this six times, so far.