sst73

I'm flying Air China (CA) in a week's time, KTM-LXA one way. I have a PNR for the booking, but can't retrieve details on any of the online systems - Check my trip, Virtually there, ViewTrip etc. I can't find any way of doing this on the Air China website either. Is there a way of checking my booking online? Just want to make sure they've got my FF details and seating request, that's all.

lKTyS7UPY

No, there is apparently no way to view CA reservations online (except for those purchased directly from the Chinese site).

After recently booking two CA segments on a *A award ticket, I confirmed them by phoning the local call center.

yw1248

All Chinese airliners hold their PNR at travelsky, a Chinese alternative to the rest of the GDS. If you have the e-tix number, go to http://www.travelsky.com/newsky/validate.html. With a bit of luck in understanding Chinese, you can retrieve your booking. On the left nevigation bar, you have 3 fields to enter, e-tix number, passenger name and the verification code that you see next to the field. As for the name, please use LastNames/FirstNames[Title], e.g. smith/Whitemr or smith/white depending on whether title was entered when you purchased your ticket.
If you have the Travelsky PNR, you can go to http://www.travelsky.com/newsky/journey_online.jsp and fill in respectively PNR, name and verification code to retrieve your booking.
Let me know if you need more help.

yw1248

If your booking is done directly with a Chinese Airliners or a China-based travel agent, you can request for the booking PNR/ticket number and check the reservation at travelsky (as above), alternatively some airliners such as CZ do provide PNR verification page on their websites. If you book it with any other GDS, you should be able to retrieve that booking via the respective GDS. Alternatively, you can call up your travel agent/in your case, your *A airline who book your tickets to retrieve the CA PNR (i.e. Travelsky PNR) and verify it accordingly. Any ticket numbers that contain a Chinese airliner segment will work on the travelsky site.

tauphi

Also note that it's very picky about the passenger name. The format should be lastname/firstname. It's also case-sensitive. In my latest booking through Expedia with CZ it was all upper case. Previous ctrip bookings had mixed case.

taipeipeter

I did that, and the flights came up, but no info on my FF# or seat requests, just the basic flight schedule and pricing.

susiesan

What phone number can be used in the US to reach Air China? I'd like to check the 3 CA segments I have as part of award tickets. I'd also like to request seat assignments. Should I call to the LA office?

yw1248

I don't think CA does seat request until check-in. You can try calling them. If your ticket is issued with a 1A PNR, you can update your FFP and hopefully seat request with Lufthansa or LOT. Else, call CA.

johnathome

I had a domestic Air China flight and the LA office was able to get my * alliance FF number and a seat assignment prior to my departure. China Eastern on the other hand, wouldn't give a seat assignment prior.

aschuett

Not to raise the dead, but after no success resurrecting a booking from the Air China site, and searching around for how to make myself feel like the booking was actually valid, I found this page. The first link worked with my PNR, but the name was certainly picky. It required the form of "LASTNAME/FIRSTNAMEMR" and didn't work without the MR in there.

Also used Google Chrome's integrated translation if that helps anyone in the future.

Thanks!

alfrie

I had tickets issued by UA and US which included Air China segments. With the ticket numbers and passengers' names, I was able to pull out itineraries and payment information. Does that mean the tickets were validated? Not really.

I called Air China for further verification and things got interesting. CA could not find those reservations in its own system at all. I showed them the confirmation codes (not UA/US code, but CA codes given to me by UA/US), and was told the codes did not exist. Gave them the flight number/date and travelers' names, and was told the names were not on the passenger list. I had to go back to the ticket issuers (UA and US), had them cancel the tickets and built new reservations from scratch.

It seemed to me that Travelsky was linked to GDS, but not directly connected with those China-based airlines. If you want to be absolutely confirmed, you should call each individual airline and validate those segments on their own metal.

Rascjp

You can check flight bookings for Air China on the mobile site

chollie

I had a similar problem a few weeks ago. I was trying to book a UA/CA itinerary on the UA website. Everything looked OK, I had a PNR for the CA flights, but ...after 4 calls to UA (and then finally a call to CA), it turned out that the CA flights were never booked. It is a known (but not widely) problem UA has with CA.

What actually happened (and they cancelled and rebooked my flights a couple times) was that a request for flights was sent to CA with an invalid fare code. CA's system saw the request, found no matching availability on that flight for that fare code, so CA waitlisted the request. In the meantime, UA took my money and generated an itinerary that looked no different than any other UA+other airlines itinerary I have booked in the past. During the 4th call with UA, I asked if they had tried calling CA - they hadn't. While I was on hold, I called CA on another line and found out what was going on.

payam81

FYI This is not just between UA/CA. AC also has the same issue. I was denied boarding on a "confirmed" tix which AC Reservations insisted was confirmed and looked good to go. The CA agent showed me her screen that showed my booking OPEN in that specific segment even though two other CA segments before and after were showing confirmed as well as the AC segments which were the first and last. Ended up buying a full Y tix to board the flight and was advised by AC to call back to deal with the refund of the one-way tix later when travel had finished.

piotro

And when you check it there you will see another PNR id on the top of the page, this one you can use on checkmytrip.