Getting your PNR booking reference for non-BA flights booked through BA
 

I am taking the essence of this thread: http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/briti...deshare-3.html and reposting it slimmed down and some more Google friendly words so it's a bit easier to find. (Sorry to bore you regular fliers but I'm fairly new to flying US domestic and this thread helped me out enormously today once I'd found it.)

When you book non-BA (e.g. AA American Airlines or US Airways) flights through British Airways you get the BA Booking Reference (known as PNR - Passenger Name Record).

Because other airlines use different back office systems this booking reference doesn't match the code you will need to do OLCI (online check-in) or change seats.

First you need to wait for your flights to be "ticketed" - this usually happens straight away, but sometimes there can be a short delay after booking. Getting the confirmation email from BA usually means this is done (you'll see the long "Ticket Number" show on your booking).

The next step is to go to the Amadeus Check My Trip website:

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-4...heckMyTrip.png

Enter your BA PNR reference and last name. This takes you to your itinerary - at the top are the different reference numbers for each airline you're travelling on:

https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-T...a0/s517/AA.PNG

Make a note of these. You can then go to each airline's own website (e.g. www.aa.com or www.usairways.com) enter the relevant reference and then check-in / look at seating etc.

I hope that is all correct and helps someone else.

Very helpful ^

The reverse scenario, especially AA on BA, you can use your AA PNR on BA.COM and it will automatically retrieve the BA Amadeus PNR. Allowing you to use MMB services.

I believe this is not available for IB on BA as they have a intermediate booking engine involved.

BUMP

I just used this to choose seats on an AA flight that BA would let me do - and as an update you can use the same PNR on a IB booking (made via BA) to choose seats, on IBs own website.

Merci bien!^:D

Just which business seat to choose out of ALL of them on AA 777-300ER ...

DELETED

Thank you - very helpful and easier than calling AA call centre.

This doesn't seem to work anymore. Or at least not for me. All that shows up is the BA reference.

Short of contacting AA, is there any way to do this online? None of the methods seems to work. I booked mine through a TA, in case it makes things more complex.

You could contact your TA.

Does your booking show up on ba.com's MMB? If so, then go to the seat change option and try to change the seat on your AA flight. You will get transferred automatically to the AA site where your AA PNR will be prominently displayed.

I am actually trying to do the opposite: get a BA PNR for an itinerary for which I have AA/US PNRs.

Try: https://www.britishairways.com/trave...agent_bookings

I emailed AA to get one for Finnair flights as part of a booking, the BA leg automatically showed in my BA account due to exec club number. I booked through AA.com and they replied to my email the following day giving me the finnair PNR as an example

Thank you, but I already tried that...
http://i.imgur.com/StLGAaa.png

Same as Techie... I was looking to get my flight booked on AA.com, operated by US, to My Flights so I can notified of changes etc. Looks like an email to AA is the next step.