nkedel

I have had a very odd experience. I logged in to check my miles from a flight yesterday (oddly, the short east coast hop posted while the transcon didn't) and found that my record locator had been changed and my wife was no longer on my reservation.

Fortunately, she wasn't cancelled -- she was now the only one passenger on our original locator (my kids and I are on the new one) -- and I've called in to have the records linked. The phone agent was as surprised as I was -- the records were split in SFO two hours after we were already in the air SFO-CLT.

Beyond linking (or to use the phone agent's term, cross-referencing) the records, there seems to be nothing to be done, and with any luck nothing will go wrong with our return. Nonetheless, this is baffling, and I have an email into customer service.

So, my question is: has anyone seen this happen before? Is there an explanation? And beyond the issue of potential IRROPs on the return (hopefully we got our share of that on the way out... our CLT-LGA flight was delayed in the air so long it needed to make a fueling stop) is there any particular reason for concern?

Mark_T

Were any of you upgraded?

TPJ

Weird. I believe with Sabre you do not need to split PNR to upgrade only one of the passengers.

ravenalive

same thing just happened to me. Booked my wife and I last Sept for round trip this month LAX - OGG - LAX . Single PNR. We flew the first leg 5 days ago, LAX to OGG, still on same PNR. Went to AA app and website yesterday to check return flight, and her name no longer appeared when I signed in using my name and password. Took me a while to figure out that I am now on a completely new PNR, with her remaining on the old one. No upgrade for either of us and no notification or explanation of the PNR change was sent to me by email. Weird.

JDiver

Regardless of how this happened, you should read the Wikipost in FAQ: TCP, "Linking" / link / merge itineraries / PNR (master thread). (PNRs can not be “linked”, only cross-referenced - that might come in handy during IROPS / OSO.)

nkedel

Missed this question at the time, but we'd upgraded far in advance (I don't remember if it was miles+copay or SWU anymore) rather than waiting for points-based upgrades (I don't think we even could have done that with 3 seats?) and had confirmed upgraded BPs before showing up at the airport, so I would not expect that to have had any impact.

Centurion

No such thing as a link. Just a note in both PNRs. Useless during IROPS that are mostly done by computers where Murphys law states you will find everyone in your group on different flights to same destination.

beachfan

Useless is too strong as it has kept us together during IRROPS a couple of times. Probably useless without high status, but I know they’ve looked at it for me at least once.