Wondering if someone has a rational explanation to this…

Booked round trip flight through Amex Travel using International Airline Program, CLT-ORD-DUB on Oct 2 and DUB-ORD-CLT on Oct 15. All flights operated by American Airlines, flight sold by Iberia - Premium economy on the international segments only.

Flight confirmation from Amex showed two PNRs; the first (AA) allowed me to reserve seats on the CLT-ORD segment, but not the other three. The second seemed to be an Iberia PNR, with same information - no ability to reserve seats due to flying on AA metal.

After multiple calls between Amex and AA, turns out there’s a third PNR (AA) that shows segments 2-4 only - and allowed seat reservations on those segments.

Should I be concerned about the split PNRs? I now have seat reservations on all segments, but the first PNR has conflicting seat data to the third one for the ORD-DUB segment - system-assigned economy seats on the first PNR and premium economy seats (my choice) on the third PNR.

Huge thanks in advance if anyone can explain what’s going on, my head is spinning!!

AA started to do the double PNR for codeshares starting a couple years ago. If you book on AA.com and have a codeshare on a partner (I know TATL JV specifically does this, don't know about other codeshares) then there will be two PNRs in your account: 1) the full PNR will all flights as booked, including codeshares, 2) a seperate PNR that includes the codeshare flights as AA primes. The second PNR allows you to select seats, but doesn't really do anything else.

Here's an example from my trips for a AMS-HEL-LHR-JFK-LAX flight with the LHR-JFK a BA code on AA metal.


I have found that the best way to select seats on TATL codeshares is to use rj.com. For some reason their site usually cuts through all the codeshare BS and it allows you to select seats, or at least view what you have selected.
For IB/BA/AY PNRs you can also use checkmytrip.com for an overview of the PNR

AMAZING! Thank you so much - this finally makes sense!! Really appreciate your advice on this.

Hey Skunker - so I followed up with America airlines and they still think something is wrong with the two PNRs and the different Economy/Premium economy seat assignments on each (although they can’t say what, only that I needed to call Iberia). So I called Iberia - and they are just showing the correct Premium Economy seat reservations on both of their equivalent PNRs. Is there anything else to do at this stage, other than show up at the airport on Saturday and keep fingers crossed that American can get the correct seat reservations etc? Thanks again for your help!

Call AMEX as they booked it, and they should tell you if all is OK

Thank you - I did, and they were unhelpful. They kept saying I needed to call Iberia/American, and that they were not going to directly intervene. This is the first personal flight I booked through Amex - probably the last at this rate 😅