stevebintley

I've just booked a flight on Qatar.com to Yangon (YGN). Very excited to visit somewhere which looks fantastic! I'm out from LGW on BA4480 and back to LHR on BA7001, both to DOH. Given that both legs are around 6 hours long I'd rather not be hemmed in against the window or in a middle seat; I'd much rather be on an aisle seat, preferably in the middle section (Economy travel I meant to say!).

As I understand it (and tried), I can't do this online, either on BA or QR sites, so I've just spent a while on the phone to BA. BA4480 is a 787-8 so I asked for 25D/F and BA7001 is an A350 so I asked for 29D/F. More time on hold for the agent to come back and say they were reserved for handicapped travellers. So I asked for any D or F seat in the cabin, but she said no, all reserved for handicapped travellers.

Is it true that every Economy aisle seat on a Qatar plane is reserved for handicapped passengers? I did question it but she was adamant and there was nothing else she could try. Is there anything else I can do to ensure I am the 'disturbed' rather than the 'disturber' during these flights? Unfortunately Business isn't an option for me :-(

KARFA

stevebintley

Thank you, but I don't see a seat selection area in MMB on BA. Where it's normally listed I only get baggage, arrival contact, at the airport, visa checks & passports and cancel / change booking. None of the options have a link to anything regarding seating below...

Travelling Inspector

I suspect the agent is misinterpreting 'suitable for' as 'reserved for'. But you do need to get the QR PNR, and a more helpful BA agent should be able to tell you that. I had a similar experience in reverse the other day - booked a two-leg flight on S7, of which the first leg is on BA metal with an S7 codeshare flight number, and the S7 equivalent of MMB could tell me nothing about seats or indeed check-in for the BA leg. Searching the S7 PNR on the Amadeus website (CheckMyTrip) revealed the full itinerary with a reserved seat on the BA portions, but not one I wanted. A call to BA with the S7 PNR was partially successful, but the agent almost in passing mentioned that there was a different PNR for the BA portions and I should try that. Bingo! So if you get the QR PNR you should be able to access your booking on the QR site and choose seats. I don't have precise experience of that (my recent flights on QR were booked direct with them) but they certainly recognise oneworld status for free seat selection.

stevebintley

Sounds similar - I know I have seats on the BA numbers since changing the QR flights sends me an email detailing them. Is there another way to find the QR PNR, without spending another hour on the phone? One of the subscription sites?

Travelling Inspector

There's no other way that I'm aware of - but a simple request for the QR PNR should not take hours on the phone, once the agent has clanked through the reservation screens it should be there. Or you could try the QR office at T4: 0330 024 0125 (Open Monday-Saturday 9am-6pm and Sunday 9am-5pm)

stevebintley

Ok thank you, I'll give it a go with BA before they close. Out of interest, what does a QR PNR look like (certain number of characters etc) and where do I enter it on the QR site to attempt to find the seats - I can only see the normal booking reference field?

Travelling Inspector

All Amadeus PNRs are the same, six-character alphanumeric, and otherwise known as the booking reference - that's what you put in the QR Manage Booking tab. My BA and S7 ones were surprisingly similar, starting with the same two characters. Anything that has more characters is an airline-specific internal reference and not much use...

stevebintley

Thank you. No such luck with BA - new agent claimed she couldn't access any other booking reference and I should be making the request to QR anyway (this goes against what the BA website says). She kindly offered to put me though but of course I got cut off because they close at 6pm. One for the morning I guess...!

Also, does anyone else find the BA hold music very 'un-British'?! Sounds like relaxing in a Spanish cafe more to me, but delightful all the same

RunningforMiles

stevebintley

I'm guessing the e-ticket number is the "157-..." within the QR email confirmation? Putting that in the fields along with my surname results in "We are unable to process your request...NSP103". I tried without the hyphen too. The normal booking reference search is working still so I assume it's not a 'server' problem. :-(

KARFA

stevebintley

Seat selection doesn't show anything, in fact I can't even select the BA number flights since it says "Other airline". I've just looked everywhere else and there's no other references I can see on QR within any pages. I've even export the booking confirmations from MMB to PDF and read every line.

madfish

stevebintley

It found my booking on Finnair, and I successfully received the email confirmation. But no six character references in there. I even tried the 157 ticket number in the different format it had, but no luck. Couldn't do it on the site as it said they couldn't sell me a seat.

This is both my first connecting flight ever, and first other OneWorld flight...how do you lot do it?! This seems far too complicated...