westy12

Just about to fly to Muscat on Qatar Airways and will get enough on outward leg to (just) make BA silver, but then Tier points and Avios from return leg won't change my BA status much.

At the same time, have plenty of AA point due to expire soon that I would like to keep active.

Has anyone ever credited outward and return legs of the same booking to different programmes? Am lucky that I expect the outward part to have already credited to BA before return

Cheers, Paul

Confus

Yes but try to resist the temptation to send yourself round in circles trying to do it in advance. Let the outbound post to Scheme 1, then when you check in for the return, ask the agent to change the FF number to Scheme 2 (don't get a BP in advance as this will print the old one). The trigger for points crediting is boarding the flight, which results in a FFM being sent to your 'owning' airline for that sector, so as long as it's set before you go through the gate, you'll be fine.

brp

How critical do you believe this part is? When checking in for a multi-leg flight, system will often generate BPs for all legs up front. I am assuming that after one changes the FFN to scheme 2 for leg 2, one can just get a new BP from the GA and be good to go, despite having generated the original BP for leg2 initially?

We have some {SFO,SJC}-LHR-{Europe destinations} flights coming up and I want to leave the longhaul on AA and credit the intra-Europe to BA as we will need just a few TP for Silver. Pretty sure that I'll get both mobile BPs when I check in, though.

Cheers,

flatlander

Trying to be tricksy with your crediting on AA operated flights can come a cropper - AA's systems are set up to try to prevent you using benefits (such as luggage, or upgrades on an AAdvantage membership) and crediting to another programme. This makes changing the FF number at checkin hard, and even if the staff think they've done it, the crediting can go otherwise than you would like.

BA-operated are more forgiving. I never tried on Qatar.

brp

Actually, I found all airlines I've tried this with (AA, BA, AY) quite accommodating. All agreed to do it. On a January set of flights it worked like a charm, despite being convoluted (wanted longhaul on AA, shorthaul on BA). Looked like this:

Day 1:
SJC-LHR (AA)
LHR-BIO (BA)

Day 2: (actually 5 days later)
BIO-MAD (BA)
MAD-LHR (BA)
LHR-SJC (AA)

Recent trip did not go as well:

Day 1:
SJC-LAX (BA)
LAX-LHR (BA, wanted AA, and agent indicated she had changed it; this was BA-marketed AA flight after prior cancellation)
LHR-HEL (BA)

Day 2 (5 days later)
HEL-LHR (Wanted AA, posted to BA - even with AA number definitely in there and on BP)
LHR-LAX (Wanted AA, posted to BA - even with AA number definitely in there and on BP)
LAX-SJC (BA)

For Day 1 I do have a BP showing the LAX-LHR with my AA number, so will call first AA to see if I can get them to fix this. Waiting to see if return is a cock-up as well.

Also, one easy way to handle the number change is to do it yourself. Works easily on the Finnair.com site, with BA PNR. Subsequent BPs show as one would expect.

Edit: Despite doing this and confirming, it posted wrong. Clearly the governing program is not locked in at BP scan time, but some later (posting?) time. Makes this harder to do upfront.

Cheers.

brp

(Highlight mine). I seem to have found out (as noted in my post) that this may not be the case. On our recent flights, I had my our AA numbers in the booking prior to our initial flight that day. I did it myself on finnair.com; I confirmed it there. I confirmed at the gate and on the BP. After HEL-LHR and the considerably longer LHR-LAX, I changed to BA for the final LAX-SJC leg. The third has not posted yet. The first two posted to BA, despite AA being on record when I swiped at the gate.

Cheers

brp

I seem to be a chorus of one lately, but wanted to come back to follow-up.

BA are, indeed, quite pleasant about this. So are AA.

I called AA and they suggested that I first needed to call BA to get them to release the specific flights I wanted (in the end 2 of 3 legs on the outbound, 1 of 3 on the return).Ba agreed and said it could take up to 7 days. it took about 4. (There was an amusing interplay where I called BA Holidays and they indicated that they handled he reservations but not the crediting end, and I should call the silver line. Silver line said "we can't handle this, need to call BA Holidays. When I explained the prior call the agent was happy to look into it). Then I called AA and they said that they would annex the flights (said they needed to contact BA to release them despite my claim that they had been released). They said it could take up to 30 days. it took 2.

And it's all done.

Cheers.

RB211

Thanks for the update. Glad you got it sorted relatively easily and quite quickly.

rb211.

onobond

Having the same experience as described above. Learned from an earlier "lesson" that at any change of FFP crediting, it's important not to have any trace left of the former visible on the BP. What was said to be changed to crediting to AA had my BP printed at lower left corner "Emerald/AA/XXXYYY", but underneath my name, upper left corner was "Gold/Emerald" printed, an indicator to why, at the gate the agent said it still was BA. As the major rush of boarding was over, I politely asked her to change fully to AA, which was OK. Everything credited the way I wanted.

As an example, in the last half of January, I flew ALG-MAD-LHR-LAX-JFK-LAX-LHR-MAD-ALG, originally having my AA # in the reservation, but en route changing the two first and last flights to BA. Upon check-in for the LAX flight, I noticed the BP had BA #, but the First Wing agent quickly helped me out on that. In the end all flights but both TATL were credited as I wanted. After a quick call to AA EXP desk and then further to CS, I got a mail to answer with a pic of BPs. Correct credit in my AA account the next day (!).

HereToHelp

You can have the FF numbers credited to individual flights beforehand but this can only be done manually on the GDS by either the airline call centre staff or by your travel agent.

brp