Changing frequent flyer numbers - does this work?
 

I am CX Diamond but wish to credit my upcoming BA flight to Executive Club. I currently have my CX number registered against my booking, so that I can take advantage of the advanced seat reservations.

Just before I check in online, I intend to change my number to BA (on finnair.com) so that the flight credits to the BA account. But will I lose my exit row seat reservation at the same time for the return flight?

Once I have completed to outbound trip, can I change the number back to CX to (hopefully) get my seat reservation back?

Any ideas?

Hey, I'm also in a similar situation. I used my OW status to prebook the seats on an upcoming BA flight and now I wish to swap to my AA account to credit the miles to.

Do I lose the seat assignment in the process? Thanks!

I'll have a stab at answering this, given the lack of replies.

In theory you don't need to switch. There are actually 2 fields on your booking, FQTV and FQTS. TS is status, TV is, let's call it "value" for crediting Miles or Avios. So in karaokequeen3's case you want FQTS to be BAEC and FQTV to be AA. A good booking agent or travel agent should be able to amend your booking to show this, then all is well. I'm not aware of an online tool that does this.

If you want to switch FF number yourself online, you best try to do this as late as possible, otherwise there is a risk you lose seat assignments, particularly if there is an aircraft swap (or even if they swap in a new aircraft then swap it back). Ultimately there is an element of risk here and you need to decide which is the more important, seat or miles.

If you end up crediting to the wrong programme, it can be reversed in the case of QF, AA and BA, but it's slow and hard work (less so for AA). In the case of CX and QR it reportedly is near to impossible to change, so if you end up crediting CX in error there may be little that be done about it. For this reason, I personally think it's not a good idea to run two frequent flyer cards in the same alliance unless you are doing truly massive amounts of flying.

While principally agreeing with you, after the BAEC devaluation many of us either have BA status while still building status somewhere else, or due to different earning rates for Y flights credit different schemes depending on points awarded.

Master Tafflyer flew DFW-HKG-DFW and we were shocked at the 20TP, 2K Avios and 4K tier bonus awarded to BAEC on the outbound. We signed him up to AA, status matched his BA Silver to AA while he did a Platinum challenge. Instead of 12K Avios round trip he received 32K AA miles. However, I'll still credit any WT+ or higher flights he makes to our HHA.

Thanks very much CWS for the clarification. I'll give AA a call shortly then!

You could also try waiting until you're at the airport and only then ask an agent to change the FF number. On my last flight someone in the SFO lounge had the agent there change the FF account for his ticket from BA to AA without any apparent issues.

That is certainly good advice as a fallback position, but it's also the most likely to go wrong, depending as it does on a clean interface of data back to the relevant frequent flyer card administration. There are certainly plenty of cases where this goes wrong, even when the boarding pass is reprinted with the correct information on it. On the other hand that boarding pass is very valuable evidence in the event of a dispute!

As usual, reied to use Finnair's website to change my FF number on an avios booking. However the FF section is now showing our BA numbers and are greyed out so they cannot be changed.

Anyone else had this problem?

Did you book your flight with Avios or paid with cash? I don't think you can change the FF number if you booked with Avios.

You actually can but it takes a supervisor to completely remove the number from the booking. They will tell you it cant be done it may take 2-3 calls but insist in a friendly way and get the right person and it works.

are you sure??? My other Amex booking using a 2-4-1 voucher allowed me to change the FF number and that was of course booked using Avios

I'm sorry I gave a wrong information. I should learn to not get the first "no" as the final answer and call back as many times as it takes to get to the desired action.

That's the problem. All can seem hunky-dory at the switch (after all, it's just pressing buttons or swiping), but the magic doesn't go through to the back-room.

My experience was with Lufthansa/UA - it wasn't a success: BA/AA might be better. There again .....