shorthauldad

Maybe it is: I checked in from a hotel room in LAS using the "AA PNR" for a BA booking, expecting to get one BP for LAS-JFK, instead got 3 BPs, LAS-JFK, JFK-LHR and LHR-MUC.

It was so slow printing, by the time I'd realised there were 3 BPs in the document, I'd already gone to BA.com and had already got the JFK-LHR and LHR-MUC BPs using my "BA PNR" ... a second time!

EDIT: this was 1x AA metal and 3x BA metal on a booking through BA.com, I got 1 x BA PNR and 1x AA PNR. Maybe it doesn't work if it's an AA PNR for BA metal?

jonnny

No worries but maybe you can help me smuggle out some champagne bottles from the lounge - what with the recent reports of beverage shortage on this flight

J

Globaliser

I still don't see why no OLCI for the DUS-LHR flight would have been a deal-breaker. Even if you couldn't OLCI that, you could have surely have checked-in for both DUS-LHR and LHR-DUS when you got to T5 that morning?

irmster

I specifically asked that - and the agent said I could not check in for DUS-LHR at T5 - only in DUS - he said you can only do that if it was on the same PNR. (I think you are right though).

Andriyko

It is different when the first flight is with AA as in your case. Had your first flight been an AA codeshare on BA metal this would not have worked.

It is also possible to check in for AA flights on ba.com when the first flight is BA operated, however in my experience AA woudl not have a slightest idea that you have checked in for the flight.

Globaliser

I suspect another example of the phenomenon that real life experience, qua passenger, of how an airline's systems work can often beat the scripted (or worse, off-script) responses from a call centre staff member who may not personally know how they work!

Sam Bee

I didn't see any mention of Vendor Locators... hopefully this won't confuse matters.

There are 4 major GDS's (Global Distribution Systems) - Sabre, Galileo, Amadeus and Worldspan. Every airlines and travel company is plugged into one (depends largely on commercial deal, but some are airline owned / created - like American Airlines created Sabre).

They are all fairly similar and feel like something created in the 1980's.

When you make a booking (say on ebookers which uses Galileo) you get a unique PNR (usually 6 alphanumerics) which you can then use to pull up your details on ebookers, or Galileo's online consumer programme which I think is www.viewtrip.com). That PNR is unique to that GDS only. You can't pull up the reservation on that PNR on Sabre, Amadeus or Worldspan.

However, if you have booked a British Airways / AA throughfare on ebookers neither BA or AA use Galileo, so the PNR is useless as neither airline can bring it up on their GDS's. But, everytime you create a PNR, imbedded into that is a Vendor Locator (VL) which is also normally 6 alphanumerics. This is unique to the airline (not the GDS), and be used across all platforms, and is what the airline uses.

Of course as an aside, and airline can also use surname / route / flight etc to pull up your details.

So, in the example used, you will have an Galileo PNR, a American Airline VL and a BA VL (one PNR and two VL's). So all sectors will be on the same PNR but you have two different VL's (which is what I'm guessing is causing the confusion, and for all intents and purposes they are very similar).

To make this more confusing American Airlines use Sabre, and British Airways use Amadeus, which normally limit what each airline can do to the other airlines segments (i.e. you book a ticket to MSY via ORD using BA.com on BA/AA metal it's harder for BA to amend the segments on the AA flight number than the BA codeshare). Many times airline partners can see the connections / segments on other airlines on the same PNR - but can not touch them - i.e. if you have a nested DL MSY-ATL run on the same PNR, the BA staff can see the flight but not do anything - if you've booked that on a different PNR, they can do nothing).

However this changing as the GDS's realise that if BA / AA / IB were to merge to one GDS there would be big losers somewhere, so they are allowing 'communication' between GDS's for airline partners.

I'd like to apologise to anyone still reading this for creating the more boring post in Flyertalk's history, and apologise for not being able to give you your 2 minutes back. I also hope that's clearer that I fear it might not be?

stifle

Thanks, that's interesting. Now can you please also tell us the difference between a reservation and a ticket, and what a fare basis stands for

jimcbob

I have had this with a Qantas leg on a booking. You can tell that one of the PNRs is just to produce a record in the other airline's systems, I think, because MMB records the sector as "For Information Only" where it usually says "Confirmed".

jbalmuth

The call centre staff member may have been reading from the wrong script. My recent experience of LHR - BRU - JFK, all ticketed by BA and both flights with BA flight numbers did not permit OLCI of the BRU - JFK segment as it was on AA metal, and even landside special services at T5 were unable to generate the boarding passes. We wasted the better part of an hour on this, with T5 special services on the phone multiple times with AA, and I now perfectly understand how/why a call centre script gets written. [Even after arriving landside at BRU, the BA ticket desk was unable to print-out the boarding passes; BPs were obtainable only from the landside Kiosks or the AA check-in desk.] The scenario in our case was a BA-issued ticket with a BA flight number (codeshare on AA metal), and the verbiage asserted to the Op by the call centre was exactly correct for our scenario ---- but not the Op's.

NickB

Interesting and rather bizarre. I have had more complex combinations that worked: BA-coded//AY operated flight followed by AA-coded//BA-operated flight, all on an AA ticket. I ended up with a shower of different PNRs for the same flights but still had no problem OLCI-ing (on AY and BA respectively, i.e. on the operating carrier's website). Rather strange that BA could not issue a simple BA+AA/BA-coded itinerary, something that they can do routinely when the connection is at a US port rather than BRU. I wonder whether this has anything to do with CBP/TSA issues and wondered whether the reason why they could not issue it at either LHR or BRU landside was a flagging/random selection that resulted in preventing the issue of a BP by anybody else than AA at the port of departure.

Sam Bee

Remember - there is only ever 1 PNR for each booking!

It's 'Vendor Locators'. Two different things.

(again )

I've seen many experienced travellers using the term 'PNR' with the utter conviction they knew exactly what they were talking about, when they weren't. These are the people that don't take being corrected lightly, so normally they aren't.

NickB

OK: locators, rather than PNRs.
But please excuse me for considering that somebody has forgotten the [pedant][/pedant] tags in their post, since the comment makes exactly zero practical difference whatsoever to the issue other than formally correcting use of improper terminology.

Sam Bee

Without wishing to be a [pedant]pedant[/pedant], but definitely making use of [incrediblyboringcommentto99.9%offlyertalkers] tags, it's more than that as it explains the '2 PNR's' comment, but the incorrect usage of the terminology can cause confusion as both things exist simultaneously, but are completely different - for example an airline colleague stated that if speaking to a consumer, they automatically assume they are talking about something different as they are 100% wrong, but if they are speaking to someone in the industry there is a 80% change they are right [/incrediblyboringcommentto99.9%offlyertalkers].

Yeh, OK, I concede the point, it's really not that important. If the argument related to buttons in a cockpit it would be important. Ah, sod this, i'm getting out of this hole

jbalmuth

I think not --- the shared BA/AA landside Kiosk in BRU had no problem at all with the boarding pass printing, and the BRU BA ticket desk personnel advised that this was not at all unusual, apparently a common/known (but unaddressed) IT issue.