CCayley

First my apologies for being entirely clueless on how airline computer systems work, so I am hoping someone with appropriate experience and expertise will be able to confirm whether I should relax or panic about the following situation.

A few days ago I bought, on AA.com, an ex-DUB ticket to JFK in CW in the current sale. Although all flights are on BA metal they were booked as DUB-LON-JFK on AA codeshares, JFK-LON on a Finnair codeshare and LON-DUB on the BA flight number.

On AA.com everything shows correctly under their record locator, but as all flights are operated by BA I'm keen that everything should be hunky dory there too. Unfortunately there are no less than 3 BA booking references for these flights. The first shows the outbound DUB-LON-JFK flights on BA flight numbers and I can reserve seats. The return flights are missing. The second contains the (repeated) LON-JFK (but not the feeder flight) and also the JFK-LON, both on AA flight numbers, and has the LON-DUB flight on the BA number. I can't select seats for these flights but BA customer services were able to allocate one for the AA codeshare but not (bizarrely) the LON-DUB. No. 3 is identical to no. 2. The ticket number is the same in all 3 booking references.

On calling AA I was assured all was fine but I'm afraid the gentleman did not inspire any confidence since he barely seemed to comprehend the issue. I tried BA whose representative said "It all looks very odd", assigned one seat as noted above but couldn't do the other, denied he could do anything else as it is up to AA, and told me not to worry.

So should I be relaxed, or am I going to find the ticket gets cancelled halfway through the itinerary because I showed up for only one of my 3 flights to JFK?

Pet0r

This seems to be pretty normal and as long as the main PNR is correct (presumably the AA one as they are ticketing it), it should be fine.

For my upcoming flights to the US ex-EU, they are ticketed by BA and all under US codeshares, but are a mix of being operated by AA and BA, so I have a main BA PNR, a US PNR (which is useless), an AA PNR and a second BA PNR (on which 2 flights are missing compared to the main BA PNR).

A similar thing happened with my seat reservations as well, for one of my flights operated by BA, I can't reserve seats for it on the main PNR (under the US codeshare), but on the 2nd BA PNR, it's listed under its BA flight number and I can. BA customer service reckon that if I do a seat reservation on that PNR, it should work as intended and the seat should be reserved for my journey.

If you look up the PNRs in checkmytrip.com, you should find the AA PNR with all of your flights on it has been ticketed whereas the others won't have been.

nux

This is perfectly normal for flights containing multiple carriers. As long as your main record locator shows all the flights and you have a valid e-ticket(s) covering all the flights there is nothing to worry about.

See also:
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/briti...d-booking.html
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/briti...-ba-metal.html

Sam Bee

A simple clarification as people are often confused (which is fair enough - why should they know).

There are multiple (but 4 main ones) historic airline booking systems (called GDS's Global Distribution Systems) - which used to be owned by airlines. But each airline has one they use in-house (this gives you an idea, but is out of date) - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compute...vations_system

When you make a booking, the airline creates a PNR (Passenger Name Record) on that GDS - this is 6 Alphanumeric Characters i.e. ..2B3C that is unique to that GDS (and you might use to see on ViewTrip or the GDS equivilent).

The trouble is that if you make a booking that includes multiple airlines, it will be on the system the the airline you book with uses (AA's system in your case) - but not on the other airlines systems, so they might struggle to make changes to their sectors.

Therefore every airline generates an 'Airline Locator' which is also normally 6 Alphanumeric Characters (some exceptions, notably MH who only use 5 in their locators).

So you should have Multiple Airline Locators in your booking as you have multiple airlines. And you'll have an AA one, even if no AA sectors. If this booking includes say, an Iberian Codeshare on BA, you'll have an IB Locator as well. You will have myriads of (largely one world) 'Airline Locators' - but you should only have one for BA. (You may have others that relate to BA Sectors - i.e if a US codeshare on a BA flight - but you should only have 1 for BA).

Can't help feeling I write the above more succintly, but hope it helps. The biggest confusion is between the 'PNR' and the 'Airline Locator' which are two different things.

CCayley

Thanks for the interesting post, and of course I am familiar with the fact that my booking has generated separate locators for Finnair, BA and AA. However I appear to have 3 BA record locators. I am still unsure whether I should be concerned.

headingwest

A similar thing happened to me when I booked on AA.com.

The booking contains 9 flights with 4 airlines (HG,AA,US,BA). This created 3 different booking numbers, 1 for AA, 1 for US, and 1 for BA and HG. Whilst I can see all sectors when viewing on AA's website, 1 sector seems to be missing when viewing using the Amadeus system (on BA.com, airberlin.com, Iberia.com, etc.).

I guess the best thing to do is print the e-ticket confirmation e-mail from AA, which lists all the sectors in the intinerary, just in case I experience any problems during the journey.

One thing that is concerning me though is that when I look at some flights on the BA app there doesn't appear to be a ticket number. Is that normal? All flights on BA and AA metal have ticket numbers, but those on US and HG are without. Not knowing exactly how tickets are issued, it makes me wonder if everything is as it should be.

nux

No reason to be, as I've said this is perfectly normal for multiple carrier bookings. I assume you have some AA domestic flights in between the TATL's.

Since you booked on AA.com, the Sabre record locator is your master booking reference and should contain all the flights and a valid e-ticket. The BA PNR('s) may contain a subset of the flights and may not have the ticket number displayed.

headingwest

Thanks nux, so I needn't worry.

Sam Bee

I would be interested to see as dealing with gazillions of PNR's i've never seen this happen. 1 PNR should = 1 Unique Airline Locator.

If you enter them seperately into BA.COM do they all come up with all the same flights? I'm leaning towards the data is being scraped and shown in a confusing manner.

Critically, I wouldn't worry a jot though

CCayley

No, there are no domestic AA flights. As I said, all flights are on BA metal.

CCayley

They come up with the flights as described in the OP, i.e. flights 1 and 2 out of 4 on booking 1, and flights 2, 3, and 4 in each of the others. And if I log in they show as three separate bookings, but with the same duplicated flights, in the 'My bookings' section.

Swanhunter

My biggest concern would be if you don't have any ticket numbers. That can create a world of pain. Assuming your booking has been ticketed I would worry about the minutae of record locators.

Hoch

If I recall correctly, last year I had 4 booking references on ba.com. It was quite funny really as two of them didn't allow me to do anything whilst the first two did. In the end, everything was fine because all of them had the same PNR. It can be a little disconcerting especially if this is the first experience with multiple booking references (it was for me).

H

Pet0r

For me, my main BA record locator contains 8 flights, as it should (was ticketed with BA).

Flights are as follows (operator in square brackets), all are US codeshares:
DUB - LHR [BA]
LHR - JFK [BA]
JFK - LAX [AA]
LAX - HNL [AA]
HNL - LAX [AA]
LAX - JFK [AA]
JFK - LHR [AA]
LHR - DUB [BA]

I have 2 BA record locators, the main one which contains all flights shown under US flight numbers. I can reserve seats for all AA legs using my AA record locator on aa.com, when looking on ba.com at my main BA record locator though, I can only reserve seats for DUB - LHR and LHR - DUB, not LHR - JFK even though it's operated by BA.

If I then look at the second record locator I have from BA, HNL - LAX and LAX - JFK are missing from it, but I am able to reserve seats for LHR - JFK on this one, and customer service reckon they would hold. It's also worth noting that on this secondary record locator, all of the flights operated by BA appear under their BA flight numbers.

Globaliser

This doesn't actually happen even if you use ba.com to book the most simple one-way flight on a BA aircraft using a BA flight number.

You're given a locator to access your booking, which will work on MMB and (for example) classic.checkmytrip.com. This will pull up the main PNR.

But BA also has an operating PNR with a different locator. You won't readily see this anywhere other than on your bag tag, but it does sometimes pop up in some publicly-accessible locations. So it isn't the case that you will only ever have one unique BA locator, even for such a situation.

If you use airline A to book a flight on airline B, it can be no surprise to find that there are at least two publicly-accessible PNRs: one generated by the booking airline and one generated by the operating airline.

Similarly, if you book airline C's flight number on airline D's aircraft, it can be no surprise to find that there are at least two publicly-accessible PNRs, one for the marketing airline and one for the operating airline.

So it can hardly be a surprise if someone uses aa.com and books:-

• Flight 1 - AA flight number on BA aircraft
• Flight 2 - AY flight number on BA aircraft
• Flight 3 - BA flight number on BA aircraft

that each of these combinations has generated a different operating PNR for the operating airline - hence the three separate operating PNRs that the OP can see. Some of the flights can appear as information sectors in other PNRs - which in the case of some of the OP's flights is probably why he can select seats using one PNR but not when the flight appears in a different PNR.

As nux says, this all sounds normal.