ddschur

I have used points and a companion ticket for an upcoming trip.

What concerns me is something that has never happened to me in prior bookings.

I booked the outbound as soon as it was possible as an open jaw.

I then booked the return (calling BA Avios number), when it became available, as part of the original itinerary.

The booking number remained and the itinerary was updated to reflect the itinerary i booked...so far, so good!

When i look up the record locator, it shows the class and route as being confirmed on the BA site; however, i am not able to select a seat and says i can select it at check-in...this has never happened on any other booking I have made with BA.

So, my first question is whether not being able to select/purchase seat is indicative of a problem?

The other concern is that I have an app (MyHD Travel) which uses the Amadeus system and shows the flights/itinerary as confirmed BUT at the bottom of the booking information it only shows the outbound itinerary but not the return!

I really hate to be so anal but i just don't want to find myself in a problem with the itinerary as we draw closer to travel with no time to resolve.

Thank you in advance to anyone who can help.

Walt

Ldnn1

You're not being anal. The change has almost certainly not yet been ticketed - BA is very slow at this. To give an example, I made a similar booking last May which took 3 months to ticket.

When is your travel? If it's soon, you should start chasing it.

windowontheAside

I booked a CPT return in two hits. Took 9 months to ticket

Although I was able to select seats so I didn't bother chasing it until recently.

ddschur

ddschur

My flight isn't until December soooo, based on the responses, I'll wait until Sept/Nov before I get too frantic!

Thank you again!

GrahamClarke

Last September I booked two outbound CW seats to CPT using Avios. 11 days later I booked the return by calling BA gold line.

I was told that they reticket based on date priority and it did take 2 months for this to occur.

Keep checking, you will know when the reticketing has happened as it will show both outbound and inbound legs on your app.

windowontheAside

In my case, the app showed both legs as soon as I booked them. The key indicator for me was that the ticket number didn't show in the app.

rjhcambs

I found an easy way to check when a ticket for the return part of a 241 had been added and finally been ticketed was to use the BA app. Although I had been able to allocate seats straight away and they would show on MMB, going into the booking on the app the seat would always show "Chose" until finally ticketed.

corporate-wage-slave

I'll just put something here since you're obviously still very concerned about this. If you're someone who like their ducks nicely in a row then I can see how this can be frustrating, but I'm afraid it's just the way BA operates.

What you did, in amending the return date, was to take your ticket out of the self serve channel, it's now up for manual ticketing, and anything else you do in this area will require manual intervention. The office that does this has a big workload and on any given day they prioritise their workload by certain criteria, the key one being date of travel: they first start their day's work on whoever is travelling that same day or the next. As the day progresses they can then move on to people travelling further out. If there haven't been too many irrops lately (and we're heading that way now) then they can eat further into the backlog since there won't be so many urgent cases.

However given you are travelling in December, it would not altogether surprise me if the transaction isn't completed until November (though a 3 month delay is more typical). If you need something like seat reservations then call up. Otherwise just leave it, they will call you if they need to, if you call them then agents are under orders not to disturb the back office, since that can only slow down the process for everyone.

You won't lose your reservation, you won't have to pay more money or taxes, your reservation won't get deleted, you won't get downgraded or rerouted because of this - there isn't much to worry about at this stage. Clearly if you are still unticketed 48 hours before departure you should call in, sometimes reservations fall into a mysterious black hole, but that's very much the exception. At 48 hours then the agents can hassle the back office.

This is - in various forms - a very common question in this forum. Occasionally it needs to be sorted at the airport (last resort) just before travelling, but rarely do we see any actual problem to the travel itself.

ddschur

Thank you very much for the time you took and the explanation you provided.

It was very helpful and allows me to be a lot less concerned about finding myself in a difficult situation re: the travel.

Take care...

Ancient Observer

The other aspect of your booking that might take time to come through is the deduction of the correct number of Avios. Sometimes there is some sort of "reconciling" to be done, (I don't know what they call it) and when I was concerned about this in an earlier thread, I was advised to forget about it until just before the flight, and check then. I paid for a discounted WT+ ticket in the sale, and reduced the price with avios. I then upgraded to J with avios. The reticketing took place after a month or so, but the avios have not all been sorted, yet. My booking is fine on both the App and MMB.

ddschur

Once again, thank you for your insights!

It is much appreciated...

Walt

markle

Not having a go at you c-w-s, as you always make massively insightful contributions here, and your explanation of what's going on behind the scenes is helpful.

However the current ticketing process is an absolute joke, and I really, really hope that the attitude of "that's just the way we do things" doesn't mean that people in BA think that it's somehow acceptable.

It's farcical that when spending a decent amount of hard-earned cash on tickets from a 'full service' airline, you find yourself stuck in a massive ticketing backlog, end up in a never-ending loop with the back office leaving a voicemail asking for your CVV, you calling back, nothing being done for weeks, then getting another voicemail asking for your CVV again... and across all this time unable to select seats / pre-order meals, etc. And, to top it all off, to actually get someone to fix it for once and for all requires (literally) an hour on the phone to a contact centre.

When I have processed a ticket change with other airlines, it's been re-ticketed same day / next day. This really is an appalling part of the customer journey at BA.

corporate-wage-slave

Funnily enough I was with UncleT earlier today in LGW and trying to get his Aer Lingus ticket sorted out - I think it needed 3 staff, with a 4th staff member being eyed up for more inputs, and 15 minutes to get a boarding pass out from a non-sync'd ticket. I think it's fair to say that about half of airlines have some difficulties with manual ticketing to a greater or lesser extent. Some airlines (AA springs to mind) are much better. On the other hand BA's website - despite the poor reviews it gets here - is actually quite good (compared to say AF-KLM, Lufthansa, Alitalia or even Iberia) and so automated transactions must now be the overwhelming majority, and cause few problems.

One facet to bear in mind is that BA do things that other airlines don't do, in terms of semi-flexible redemptions + UuA + Part Pay + 2-4-1 + GUF + Jokers + rebooking over 355 days. Other airlines have some aspects, but few have all of them and one way BA could streamline this is just to get rid of it all! Or make rules saying "one shot at 2-4-1 and no messing around afterwards".

In the long term this problem will go away, BA of all outfits, will automate this more: it's an easy win in terms of getting rid of more staff, and that logic they do understand.

markle

Thanks c-w-s, I appreciate your comments. It's fair to say that the changes I have processed with other airlines are 'simple' changes to fairly unexciting tickets, whereas the BA issues I've had have been related to changes on 2-4-1 redemptions.

As you say, reducing headcount is a measure that people understand - although I'm still amazed that nobody (yet) seems to be tackling the gross inefficiency caused by the delay in ticketing causing the CVV data to time out, calling people, leaving voicemails, customer calling - and repeat. Ironically it probably eats up staff time that could actually be spent on issuing tickets!