Award booking problems with AA
 

So i booked an award ticket with BA on AA from LAX to SAT.

Everything looked fine until online check in when it didnt work. Because we have TSA PRE i always like to check in in advance and called AA. They told me that every single person on teh booking had the same date of birth June 30, 1970.

The booking was made on the BA website using my profile and using people in my household account.

anyhow I then called BA (no 800 line at this time -midnight in the USA just a 44 191 246 3933 number for urgent matters). The lady kept me online for 45 mins trying whatever she could. In the end she told me my passport numbers didnt match (usually you dont put passport numbers in bookings and I suspect that this was also a corrupt passport number) so she couldnt make the change - that call alone cost me 120$ (yes mobile to UK number)

I slept badly and we went to the airport 3 hours earlier and it took 30 mins to have it fixed.

How is this possible. Have you experienced this before?

I am going to ask for the refund to the 120$ to BA as they should put a 800 number available for urgent matters but assume they'll decline.

Any views?

No Skype?

Tbh what matters with this booking would be what is in the API on MMB on aa.com. Did you have a look at that? You should have been able to update and change API on aa.com and enter your KTN.

The KTN were correclty put, names were correct etc.. but no dob anywhere.

Certainly calling using Skype would have been a cheaper option. I am not sure I fully understand the reference to the passport numbers as for a domestic itinerary within the USA you wouldn't need to provide this information. Admittedly for reward bookings made on BA for travel with AA it won't show DOB on the AA record locator so I think it would have been difficult to know there was an issue ahead of time.

There is no passport information given. BA however needed the passport to match so they could change the date of birth. It seems that there was a system glitch that processed the booking with wrong dates of birth and fantasy passport information that obviously I couldn't find and so we couldn't fix the dob. Yes impossible to detect the pb ahead of time

I don't have skype as I use facetime. Obiosuly doesn't work for this situation. Also I was a little panicked given I had 6 people on a booking I feared could result in a denial. What week systems. will still ask for a refund although knowing BA and its not our fault policy I know I wont get.

I don't see any reason for BA to refund the cost of the call.

Well 1) I think their systems are at fault and 2) for a global company to have no 800 calls to reach within 24 hours isn't great.

I agree with golfmad . I don't see why BA would refund the cost of the call.

On a separate note I still don't understand the reference to passport details as they aren't required for an LAX - SAT flight (SAT being San Antonio for those who may not know).

As for the lack of a global 800 number and 24-hour call centre availability, I have to agree on this. It is frustrating. You shouldn't have to dial out of region and struggle to find out which office is open at any given time.

Ok for BA to change their records they needed to match with a passport information that was never given.

In other words BA systems are totally idiotic. It was a total Kafkaian situation.

And the lady made me try every single passport of our 6 passengers (and we are dual nationals) to see if one matched. I absolutely told her that I had never entered that information and that it is not required for a booking from LAX to SAT but she insited it need to match what the system had stored so she could change the booking. That's why we lost 30 mins for nothing.

So I book electronically a ticked, following every step correctly

BA then emits tickets with completely wrong information (my household account is all correct) due to a system glitch

I spend 35 mins with a BA agent that was nice but clueless and nothing changes.

I have to go 3 hours early at the airport to have it changed by AA.

BA doesn't provide a free number

and BA has zero responsbaility.

No wonder BA is such a ...... airline, the worst by far. It has a group of die hard followers that would follow it no matter the quality so they have zero incentive to progress.

And they don't progress.

Yes I think this seems to be more an issue of a KTN not being enterable as some detail wasn’t matching. However as you say since this is a wholly AA operated itinerary I am still unclear why the details couldn’t be corrected on AA MMB before the date of the flight and the KTN entered there - I wouldn’t waste my time contacting BA if this had happened to me. I think the issue was this hasn’t been obvious to the OP.

I dont know but aa said it was issuing tickreter that had to correct ba said yes they had to correct but they couldnt.

ba s fault. 100%.

yes not changeable on mmb...

if you have ba bookings on aa check. Ba sucks!

Also not a KTN pb as aa said they could not let us FLY at all with incorrect information.

if we didnt have our passports (which we dont need for kids in the us typically) we would not have flown.

just be warned.

Also the ba lady for once was very apologetic of the poor ba systems and recongnized this did happen on a regular basis but they struggle to fix it. Ba software designers so no point expecting much improvement from the worst airline in europe.

I don't think that's a fair summary of the situation at all. I don't think BA should feel obligated to compensate you for the cost of the phone call as it was a consequential loss.