tilal6991

Hi folks,

I just did an award booking with Alaska miles and I'm trying to figure out if there's any way I can use my BA Gold (OWE) status (will downgrade to Silver (OWS) by the time that I actually fly) to secure seat selection etc.

I did *not* put my MP number when doing the award booking but when I tried to add a FF number, the website forces me to input an Alaska number only: I guess this only happens on award bookings: is there any workaround for this?

I tried to do some searches but couldn't quite find anyone trying to do the same thing. Thanks in advance!

Mwenenzi

Award on what airline?
Are you logged out of the AS web site?
You could try the manage my booking feature on Finnair AY, Royal Jordanian RJ, Qatar QR and/or Royal Air Maroc AT to remove the ffn. Then later go back and add the BA ffn.
But a good chance it will not work.

tilal6991

> Award on what airline?

Alaska itself.

> Are you logged out of the AS web site?

I wasn't previously but I just tried now fully logged out and it still is only letting me enter an Alaska number

> You could try the manage my booking feature on Finnair AY, Royal Jordanian RJ, Qatar QR and/or Royal Air Maroc AT to remove the ffn. Then later go back and add the BA ffn.

Yup I'm familiar with this trick: forgot to mention I tried this on AY, QF and RJ previously and none of them recognized the PNR. Just tried with QR also now and no dice there either.

JetAirways77W

If you have booked the flight already, you will need to call or text AS customer care to have them put your BA number in for you.

That being said, if you still haven't booked the flight yet, I've been successful in changing `AS` to `AA` in the HTML using Inspect Element before submitting the form, in order to make an award booking with my friend's AA number in it.

tilal6991

> That being said, if you still haven't booked the flight yet, I've been successful in changing `AS` to `AA` in the HTML using Inspect Element before submitting the form, in order to make an award booking with my friend's AA number in it.

So I had actually *just* bought the ticket so was within the 24 hour window to get a free refund. Since I saw there was extra availability at the same price, I cancelled the old ticket and tried to rebook with this trick.

And it actually worked! Changing AS to BA in the form option in Inspect Element made the website accept my BA FF number. And while elite seat selection didn't work during the ticket purchase process, in MMB, it worked great.

Thanks a lot - a really great trick to put in my back pocket!

Mwenenzi

Others have reported that after making the BA reservation and being ticketed going back into BA MMB can get seat selection.

tilal6991

After playing around with the website a bit more, made a couple of other discoveries:
* You can actually do this even after booking (if you didn't enter a FF number at booking time) by playing exactly the same Inspect Element trick in "Add Mileage Plan" page
* You can also *change* the FF number (even for a booking which already has one) by going to the https://www.alaskaair.com/booking/editmp from the booking page